Lexington – For the North Platte Bulldogs having Lexington as a district opponent is unusual. This year is the first time North Platte basketball has competed in class B basketball. Last night the Bulldogs showed Lexington that it won’t be easy in class B basketball this season.
The night started off with Lexington JV getting two wins over NP JV squads, but the varsity games would be far different.
The Lady Bulldogs would come out on fire against the Minutemaids, putting up 15 points in the first quarter to Lexington’s eight. It would be one of the best first quarters of the season for the Lady Bulldogs even though their leading scorer Gracie Haneborg would get into foul trouble and have to sit much of the quarter with two fouls.
The second quarter of the girls game is when the Bulldogs went for blood. They came out and played absolutely stellar defense, not allowing the Lexington girls to score until less than three minutes left in the quarter. The Bulldogs would outscore the Minutemaids 11-3 to take a 26-11 lead into the half.
The third quarter started with the Lexington girls playing more intense defense but both teams struggled with shots falling early in the third until the Haneborg girls (Callie and Gracie) finally came to life offensively. The Bulldogs would take a 37-16 lead into the final quarter.
In the fourth more great defense from the Bulldogs, they kept Lexington to only five points in both the third and fourth quarters. Until three mins left in the game, Gracie Haneborg was outscoring the entire Lexington team, she would end the night with 17 pts, 5 reb and the only player on either team to score in double digits. The Lady Bulldogs would move to 4-3 on the season. They get ready to travel to Lincoln North Star on Thursday, Dec 20th.
News also came out later that night that the Omaha World-Herald would put the Lady Bulldogs in the top 10 for the first time this year. The Bulldogs are ranked 10th in Class B girls basketball in the state.
The boys would be next up on the night, coming into the game 1-5 on the season, their lone win coming almost a week ago against McCook.
One of the things Coach Kaminski has talked about all season long is how resilient this boys team has been and that the record is not a good judge of their play. In Tuesday night’s game, the team would prove Coach right.
First quarter action for the Boys would be a lot of back and forth with teams going bucket for bucket with each other and getting up and down the court fast. Shots were really not falling for either team despite both teams getting good looks. Caleb Horne would lead the way for the Bulldogs with 6 pts in the first as the Bulldogs trailed 13-11.
The second quarter was much the same story as the first quarter, the officials were lenient on their whistles letting both teams play with a little more pace than the Dawgs have seen this year. Lexington looked like it was starting to pull away as they outscored North Platte 11-7 in the quarter to take a 24-18 lead into halftime. Starting PG Dylan Richman (JR) for the Minutemen had a great quarter scoring seven of Lex’s eleven points.
At Halftime Coach Kaminski told the boys he was proud of how they were playing and adjusted a few things defensively and it showed.
The third quarter was an entirely different game, the two starting guards Kiya Kramer and Steven Garcia came out and took over the Bulldog offense. Kramer found his 3pt shot as he put in 10 points in the quarter, Garcia was right behind him with 6 points. The Bulldogs allowed 16 points in the quarter but dropped 24 of their own to take the two-point lead (42-40) headed into the final frame.
As the game headed into the fourth quarter the prevailing thought was these two teams would go down to the wire. For much of the fourth, that was true, neither team would really take control of the game. The officials started to call the game closer in the second half which helped to open up the scoring for both squads.
They threw haymaker after haymaker at each other. Steven Garcia hit a huge 3pt shot from the wing with about 5 mins left. Lexington would follow that with a drive and foul from Nick Saiz for a traditional 3 point play.
Jack Mohr would hit maybe the shot of the season as he buried a LONG 3pt shot with about 1:15 left in the game to put North Platte up for good.
The Bulldogs would go on to win 67-61 and improve to 2-5 on the season before taking on Lincoln North Star on Thursday the 20th.
Steven Garcia came alive in the game scoring 19 pts (14 in the second half) to lead scoring for the Dawgs. Caleb Horne continued his impressive play early in the season as he had 13 pts, 4 reb. Kiya Kramer also in double-digit scoring for North Platte with 16pts, 7 reb.
Nick Saiz for Lexington had a fantastic game statistically scoring 28 pts and pulling down 7 reb.