Rebounding haunts Jays in loss; end week with noncon home win

The Three Lakes boys basketball team played its second Northern Lakes Conference game of the season against Crandon Dec. 16, and rebounding played a crucial role in a 72-69 defeat before the Jays picked up a 64-44 noncon win Thursday versus Wakefield-Marenisco.
With the week split, the Bluejays moved to 3-4 (1-1) on the season.
Crandon came to town last Tuesday and had a significant height advantage going into the matchup and it showed throughout the night. The Cardinals outrebounded the Jays 46-28, which Three Lakes head coach Geroge Lurvey said was a critical part of the close loss.
“The story of this game was rebounding. It’s awfully hard to win a game with rebounding numbers like that,” he said. “Crandon has a huge height advantage over us, but our lack of effort in rebounding is the main reason we lost the game.”
Three Lakes trailed 7-3 early on in the game before freshman Easton Lurvey, the team’s leading scorer, buried a straight-away 3-pointer to cut the lead to one, 7-6.

The Cardinals built that lead back up to 13, 29-16, with 6:43 left.
A few defensive plays kept Three Lakes within striking distance and senior Eli Erickson made a 3-pointer late in the half to cut the deficit to seven, 35-28.
After trailing by 15 at the break, the Jays cut into that early in the second with a Lurvey triple.
The Jays just couldn’t string together the stops they were looking for defensively.
“Another reason we lost was just our overall defensive effort. We have been priding ourselves as a defense-first team, and we just failed to execute good defense and help side defense throughout the entire game,” stated Lurvey.
The coaching staff looks at this game as a good stepping stone in the growth of the team. Coach Lurvey has already seen some positive steps forward as the team competes in every game.
“Sometimes a loss leads to good things in the future and I believe that is the case here. Offensively, we have had a couple of games in a row now where we are getting more balanced scoring, which is our goal. In this game, Eli Erickson shot very well from the field to lead the team with 18 points,” explained Lurvey. “Owen Liebscher also had a very good game offensively, and defensively he continues to be the heart of our team.”
Erickson shot 7-for-12 from the floor and Lurvey followed Erickson with 17 points on 5-for-16 shooting. He also led the team with nine rebounds. Senior Peyton Pitlick finished with 12 points and Owen Liebscher had 11.

Home win

In what was a tough NLC loss to Crandon a few days prior, the Jays bounced back in a big way at home with a 20-point win.

“We had a good bounce-back game after our loss to Crandon, but we still weren’t our best on defense, especially in the second half of this game,” stated Lurvey. “We need to continue to improve on our help defense so we can finish with a complete game.”
Lurvey continued his consistent scoring output during his freshman season, this time finishing the game with 27 points. Eighteen of his 27 points came from beyond the 3-point line.
The coaching staff said the team will continue to improve on some aspects of the game, including keeping focus for a full 36 minutes.
“We tend to lose focus at times and give up scoring runs to our opponents, which is something we are working on,” explained Lurvey. “We continue to work hard and learn every week, so the best is yet to come for us.”
Three Lakes will have two weeks off before its next contest Friday, Jan. 3, against Niagara, in Three Lakes at 7:15 p.m.