MEDFORD BOYS BASKETBALL - GNC wins give Raiders a shot at catching Hodags Friday
MEDFORD BOYS BASKETBALL
It took a little while for the Medford Raiders to get it going Tuesday, but once they did the Tomahawk Hatchets were powerless to stop it in a 71-17 boys basketball rout at Raider Hall.
Charlie Gierl scored all 13 of his points in the first half and Nick Krause added three 3-pointers in the first 18 minutes as Medford built a 40-11 halftime lead. The break did little to stop Medford’s momentum as the Raiders scored the first 19 points of the second half for a 59-11 lead with 12:30 still left to play.
The win put Medford at 4-1 in the Great Northern Conference and puts the Raiders in position to climb into a first-place tie at the halfway point of the league season on Friday. The Raiders will head to Rhinelander to face the 5-0 Hodags, who stayed on top of the standings Tuesday with a big 63-54 win at Mosinee, who dropped to third place for the time being at 3-2.
Medford is 6-6 overall. Rhinelander, a defending GNC co-champion from a year ago, comes into Friday’s showdown in the Jim Miazga Gymnasium at 9-2.
With head coach Ryan Brown being able to substitute freely in Tuesday’s win, four Raiders hit double figures in the scoring column. Freshman Devin Dassow hit a trio of 3-pointers and scored a season-high 13 points while grabbing nine rebounds. Dassow led Medford with three assists. Krause finished with 11 points and seven rebounds and Hayden Koester scored six of his 10 points in the big opening run to start the second half. He had nine boards.
Senior Jason Woller hit three 3pointers as well to finish with nine points. Will Daniels and Peyton Ried scored four points each. Ried had six rebounds and two assists. Freshman Dylan Frey scored his first four varsity points with an inside score in each half and Will Wojcik added a first-half 3-pointer.
Only three players scored for the Hatchets, who fell to 0-5 in the GNC and 4-8 overall. Dominic Boos scored seven points, Logan Norman scored six and Colton Seslar had four.
After Friday’s battle in Rhinelander, Medford is off until Jan. 23 and 24 when it hosts Stanley-Boyd and Lakeland.
Medford 67, Pines 52
Expecting a tight battle Friday with Northland Pines, who was coming off a big 53-49 GNC win over Mosinee three nights earlier, Medford instead seized control midway through the first half and then ran away with Friday’s game at Raider Hall in the second half, leading by as much as 27 before winning 67-52.
Gierl returned from a one-game break to score 24 points and grab six rebounds, while Koester had a 12-point, 10-rebound double-double that included six assists and three blocked shots as his intensity helped set the tone in the first half.
“He’s setting the tone every day right now,” Brown said of Koester. “He just has a mentality and an attitude. He’s a great, nice kid but when he steps on the floor now, he’s got a little bit of confidence and, I don’t want to say meanness, but he’s going to right at you. He’s not afraid, both on offense and defense.”
Northland Pines only turned the ball over 11 times, but the Raiders made them pay for most of those with 15 points. Despite the Eagles’ size advantage with 6-6 Ethan Miller and 6-5 Jonathan Miller, Medford won the rebound battle 43-39 and the Raiders, after scoring just 22 points 24 hours earlier against La Crosse Central, shot 44.2% from the field (23 of 52), including 10 of 26 from 3-point range.
“Pines has actually been very strong with their defense this year,” Brown said. “But when you go against Central’s pressure and then you see that, it’s like the game just slows down. Going back-to-back nights like that, you can really see the difference. Tonight we did a better job of moving the ball, making multiple passes, multiple reversals and then those shots are just that much more in rhythm. And you’ve got another foot or two to shoot it versus trying to hurry or speed it up.”
The offense has been at its best this season when Medford has complements to Gierl and Koester and the Raiders got that Friday with Krause hitting three of 10 3pointers while scoring 15 points and Peyton Ried going three for four from long range while scoring 10. Krause missed a double-double by one rebound. Ried had six boards and three assists.
Back-to-back 3s by Ried and Gierl, followed by a Koester score opened up a 24-12 lead with six minutes left in the first half. Late in the half, Koester fed Krause for a score, made a free throw and converted a three-point play on the next possession to give Medford a 35-25 halftime lead.
Daniels threaded a nice pass to Dassow to start the second half and the offense took off. Koester got a putback, Krause hit a 3, Gierl hit two straight bombs and Krause added one more for a 54-27 lead with 12 minutes left.
Dassow had four points, three rebounds and two assists. Corbyn Radlinger got his first varsity basket off a Wojcik assist in the final seconds. Daniels had five rebounds and two assists.
Central 41, Medford 22
Though younger and not as experienced as some of its past teams have been, the La Crosse Central Riverhawks again were a test on Thursday that the Raiders didn’t necessarily fail but they learned some things from in a 41-22 loss at Raider Hall.
As the final score indicates, this game was about defense. Medford’s was as good as it’s been all year for about threequarters of the game, but Central’s intense ball pressure from start to finish wore down the Raiders in the back end of the second half.
Medford scored just eight second-half points, making three of 23 shots from the field after the break and committing nine of the team’s 16 turnovers.
“In the first half, I thought we were really solid,” Brown said. “We had a lot of good looks that we just could not get to go down. Honestly, there were a lot of ways where, in the first three quarters of that game, we could have had a lead. We just didn’t shoot it great. It wasn’t like they were forced shots, they were good shots. That can go both ways with shooting. If you make shots, then the confidence flows. When you miss shots and you’re behind, you get tighter. With you they defend and pressure, it puts that much more pressure on you.”
For a team that had problems with turnovers in its first nine games, Medford handled Central’s pressure relatively well until the Riverhawks buried the Raiders with a game-ending 18-3 run that turned a tight 23-19 game into what deceivingly looked like a blowout at the end.
Medford led 14-8 at one point in the first half, but one could sense Central’s defense taking over late in the first half. An 8-0 run gave the Riverhawks a 16-14 halftime lead.
A Daniels basket answered a bucket by Central’s Joey Pretasky to start the second half. Nick Krause hit one of two free throws after grabbing an offensive rebound to make it 20-17 with 13:47 left and Koester got a steal and Euro-stepped to hoop that made it 23-19 with 12:10 left. But all Medford got after that was a Krause 3 off a Daniels assist with 6:59 to go.
“In the first half we had six or seven turnovers and they were trying to halfcourt trap and do a lot of things,” Brown said. “Overall we handled it well. There were some times here or there where we lost it. That was the disappointing part about the second half, it’s not even so much about the turnovers, it was how we did it. The things that we had really preached when it comes to knowing our plan was to play in the middle of the floor and not dribble down the sideline and we kind of just lost our mind on those things.”
Only three Raiders scored. Krause hit a couple of first-half 3s and finished with 12 points. Koester scored six and Daniels had four points. Medford played without its leading scorer, Gierl, who took a night of rest after playing banged-up in the previous couple of contests. Koester had six rebounds, Krause had five and Dassow had four. Woller led Medford with three assists. Koester had all four of the team’s steals.
Central shot just 32.1% from the floor, making 17 of 53 shots and only one of 15 3-point tries. Derrick Pangier led the Riverhawks with nine points.
“I thought we did a good job defensively too because they didn’t shoot it great either,” Brown said. “For three quarters of that game, we played really well. Then there was a point in there where with probably about nine minutes left, I thought we just kinda broke.”
While Medford dropped to 0-6 in games against Central since 2021-22, Brown said there remains a lot of value in playing this well-disciplined team directed by head coach Todd Fergot.
“Number one, now you’ve seen what you’re going to see over the next couple of years,” Brown said. “Number two, that’s what we do is supposed to look like. That’s to the level of what we’re supposed to do. That’s how you’re supposed to pressure the ball, that’s how your’e supposed to speed teams up and take them out of what they want to do. We need to be able to run our stuff against that.”
Medford 67, Antigo 44
Outstanding first-half execution put the Raiders in command and that control was never threatened in a 67-44 GNC win at Antigo on Jan. 7.
Koester and Daniels, in particular, got off to blazing starts as Medford jumped ahead 21-4 and extended that lead to 36-13 by halftime. The Raiders ran into some turnover troubles and cooled off just a touch shooting-wise in the second half, but the lead still never got below 22 as the team snapped a five-game losing streak.
Koester scored 14 of his 19 points in the first half. Daniels, playing in just his third game, found his offensive groove with 10 of his 14 points coming in the first half. Krause was the one Raider to catch fire in the second half, when he scored 17 of his game-high 20 points. Krause was six of 10 from the field overall, including five of nine from 3-point range.
Krause swished a 3-pointer from the right side on the game’s first possession. Antigo’s Mitch Meyer scored inside and then the Raiders took off Koester hit a 3, Daniels got to the rim from the left side, Gierl got a three-point play off Krause assist in transition, Koester sank another 3 and scored twice inside and Daniels sank a 3 for the 21-4 lead. Late in the half, Daniels grabbed an offensive rebound that led to Koester’s third 3 of the half and Gierl’s steal and score made it 36-11.
In the first half, Medford made 14 of 25 shots from the field, eight of 11 from inside the 3-point arc and six of 14 behind it, had assists on 12 of those 16 made shots and turned the ball over just three times.
“The first half I loved,” Brown said. “I loved how we executed. I loved how we sped the other team up. I loved how we defended them, jumped to the ball and did things that we’ve really been working on.”
Krause’s steal and score to start the second half got the junior guard started on his big half. His 3, followed by a Gierl 3 gave Medford its biggest lead at 50-22. Krause hit back-to-back 3s for a 56-29 lead with 8:30 to go.
Daniels was six of seven from the field and led Medford with seven rebounds and had three assists. Gierl had eight points, four rebounds, four assists and two steals. Peyton Ried added four points, three rebounds and three steals. Dassow had two points, five rebounds and three assists. Senior Sam Hierlmeier made his season debut, returning from a football injury and illness. He had a rebound, a steal and an assist. Wojcik had four rebounds, three assists and two steals.
Meyer led Antigo with 10 points and eight rebounds. Colton Thomae added eight points.
