Indians Stun The Warriors

Bowen Born gets blocked by Xavier Foster on Saturday afternoon. Foster. Fosters presence on the inside changed Norwalk's game plan.

Bowen Born gets blocked by Xavier Foster on Saturday afternoon. Foster. Fosters presence on the inside changed Norwalk’s game plan.

by Jamie Brockman

On a late Saturday afternoon, an Oskaloosa gymnasium filled with pink for Coaches vs. Cancer, witnessed the Oskaloosa boys play possibly their best game of the season, beating LHC champions Norwalk 68-47. It was also Senior Night for Oskaloosa, honoring five seniors, including Cole Henry, Rian Yates, Jackson Blythe, Austin Hafner, and Tucker Erwin.

The Warriors had a quick start as their star Bowen Born scored the first eight points helping Norwalk to an 18-13 lead after the first quarter. Oskaloosa controlled the second quarter, outscoring the Warriors 20-12 to gain a 33-30 lead at halftime, and would never trail again. Oskaloosa used a huge fourth quarter to outscore Norwalk 23-10 to get the big win.

Entering the game, Norwalk Junior, Bowen Born averaged 28 points per game. After his quick start, Tyler Miller and Isaac Schultz did a fantastic job defensively slowing him up. Xavier Foster blocked Born as he got to the basket. Clearly, that flustered the Warriors as their inside game was not a threat from that point, and Born struggled to hit from outside.

For the second straight game, Rian Yates was red hot, scoring a career-high 26 points, including six three-pointers. In the last two wins over Pella Christian and Norwalk, Yates has scored 49 points and drained 11 three-pointers. Xavier Foster added 14 points, and in addition to playing strong defense Isaac Schultz scored a career-high 10 points, including two 3 pointers. Tyler Miller scored six points, Austin Hafner five, Noah Van Veldhuizen three, while Colton Butler and Tucker Erwin each added two. Born led Norwalk with 20 points, but only scored nine in the second half, and was the lone Warrior in double figures.

Following the game Coach Ryan Parker said “If we play defense like this, there’s a really, really, really bright future for this team. Isaac and Tyler did a great job holding Born to eight points below his average, and us holding a high flying Norwalk team to 47 points if we play defense like that we can win a lot of games. We shot it well tonight too which never hurts” I also asked Parker what the atmosphere in practice and the locker room is like recently, and he said, “At first, after Cole broke his hand, then Friday at Pella there was some shock and awe, and we just weren’t sure how to handle it. Saturday at DC-G I think the road trip helped and ever since then it’s just been business-like. Cole’s been so encouraging to his teammates, talking to our younger guys about what to expect, talking to Xavier working with him, so after the initial shock and awe, we’ve recovered well. We still have to put five guys on the floor, and we expect them to play at a high level every night.”

Also in a post-game interview, Isaac Schultz said “ We had a great game plan going in. We were talking a lot on defense, communicating and it was a whole team effort”. He added, “We’re working pretty strong as a group, everyone’s contributing, we’re not going outside our comfort zones, we’re all together and playing as one, it’s pretty amazing.”

We also spoke with Yates in the post game..”You couldn’t dream of a better senior night for us, to get revenge against Norwalk. Tonight we focused more on Born and made others beat us and fortunately, it worked well. Isaac played unbelievable tonight and did everything we asked of him, and he hit some big shots too. It’s definitely a night we won’t ever forget.”
Oskaloosa has now won three straight games improving to 12-5 overall and 8-3 in the LHC while Norwalk, despite already clinching the LHC title, fell to 16-4 and 12-2 in the LHC. Osky returns to the floor hosting Grinnell Monday night with varsity tipping off around 7:30 pm, then travels to Newton Tuesday night for a 7:45 pm tip-off to close their regular season. The Indians postseason will begin at home hosting South Tama on Monday, February 18th.

Posted by on Feb 11 2019. Filed under Local News, School Activities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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