Kimball boys champions at Kimball tourney

The Kimball High boys got the season off to a great start by winning their own four team tournament this past weekend to open up the 2013-14 basketball season. The Horns won over Southeast 75-41 on Friday night and handled Dundy County/Stratton 71-44 in the championship game Saturday evening. Dundy County won over Morrill in the other first round game 76-29, and Southeast defeated Morrill 52-19 to take third place honors.

Seniors Mike Daum and Jake Reader led the Horns to victory both nights and showed the home town fans they are ready to lead a charge to get them back to the state tournament, but of course there is a lot of basketball to play before we entertain those thoughts. In the first round win over southeast, Daum led Kimball scoring with 27 points shooting 50% from the field including 4/8 on three pointers and 6/12 on two point tries plus going 3/3 at the foul line. He also charted 8 rebounds, 2 blocks, 3 steals and 2 assists. Reader finished with 21 points on 67% shooting from the field hitting on 10/15 shots from the floor and was 1/1 at the line. He matched Daum in rebounds with 8. Sophomore point guard Angel Flores netted 8 points and led the team in steals with 5. Jonathon Withrow had 4 points, Trent Rutledge 5, Henry Heeg 6, Mitchell Shields and Michael Ferguson 2 each. Colton Stull led the team in assists with 6 and pulled 4 rebounds and hawked 2 steals.

As a team, Kimball shot 56% from the field on two point attempts and 36% from three point range and were 6/8 at the line for 75%. They charted 31 rebounds to slightly edge the opponents, had 2 blocks, 22 steals, 18 assists, and 13 turnovers.

Southeast had 7 players score led by Jeff Burroughs with 10 and Garrett Murphy with 8. The Cyclones had 5 treys total and were 4/9 at the line. They were whistled for 10 fouls compared to12 for Kimball.

Coach Bruce Tjosvold said "I felt we accomplished what we wanted to do. The defense played well. We had good looks at the basket and our transition game went well. I thought it was a total team effort and every kid played well for us".

It was more of the same in the title game with Dundy County/ Stratton as Daum led all scorers with 29 points going 10/14 on two point shots and 1/4 on three pointers plus 6/9 at the line. The big 6'9" senior dominate9 inside with 17 rebounds, 7 blocks, 3 steals and 2 assists. Reader again in double figure scoring with 16 along with 6 rebounds, 2 steals and 5 assists.

Both nights, coach Tjosvold went to his bench early and gave lots of players court time, and the bench and support players showed improvement from the first night. Sophomore Ethan Land came in the second period and promptly hit back to back treys and finished with 7 points. Colton stull took only 4 shots but hit a trey and went 2/2 at the line to net 7 total. Jonathon Withrow, making the switch from wrestling to bounce ball is showing his athleticism and had 6 points off the bench. Henry Heeg, another wrestling make over from two years back, had an all around solid outing and had 4 points. Johnathan Kurth tallied 2 points to round out Kimball scoring.

The Horns shot well from the field going 18/40 on two point tries and 5/15 on three pointers, but need to improve their foul shooting as they ended up 20/39 at the line. They pulled 36 rebounds, had 9 steals, 14 assists, and 7 blocked shots.

The Tigers hit on 6/16 trey attempts, were 6/55 on two pointers, and had 38 rebounds. They were led in scoring by Cade Duvel with 21 points with 8 players scoring in the loss to Kimball.

Tjosvold said after the pre-season game with Scottsbluff, and again after the win over Southeast Friday night, that he wanted to get more players involved in the scoring, and after the win over Dundy County/Stratton, he felt they had accomplished that goal to some extent. “We still have a long way to go before we are at the point we want to be at, but we will work on it and I feel certain our younger and less experienced kids will continue to improve” Tjosvold said. This weekend’s play finds the Horns on the road to Grant Friday night to play Perkins County with jayvee game times at 4 p.m. followed by the varsity games. Saturday Kimball will host Morrill with jayvee game times at 2 p.m. followed by the varsity games.