MEDFORD BOYS BASKETBALL - NOT QUITE GOOD ENOUGH Turnovers key as Merrill outshoots Medford
MEDFORD BOYS BASKETBALL
The margin between winning and losing can be quite thin and, after a 3-0 start, the Medford Raiders are finding not being quite as sharp as they were in the first week can be costly.
The Raiders dropped their third straight game Thursday 71-63 at Merrill with turnovers again being a key factor on the offensive end and with the defense not being able to get stops consistently against a team that wasn’t shooting overly well coming in.
The Blue Jays found their shooting stroke Thursday, making 25 of 44 shots from the field (56.8%), including 10 of 22 3-pointers. They got a boost from Kory Page, a 6-2 senior who scored 17 points in his season debut and was one of four Jays in double figures.
Medford certainly shot well enough to win, making 15 of 30 3-pointers, but against an aggressive 2-3 zone employed by Merrill, they got just 11 two-point looks, making seven, and turned the ball over 18 times to somewhat negate their overall 53.7% shooting percentage.
Merrill improved to 4-3 overall. “It’s kinda the story of our season right now with the turnovers,” Medford head coach Ryan Brown said. “We have to be able to take care of the basketball. In the first half we had five turnovers. I still felt like we should’ve had only two or three. In the second half we had 14. We know we can shoot the ball, but you have to be able to get the shot off. Right now we are not doing a good enough job of doing that.”
Medford led by as much as 11 in the first half and got 21 points from junior Nick Krause, who was seven of 12 from 3-point range. Charlie Gierl hit four of 10 3-point tries and added 16 points and five rebounds.
Peyton Ried hit Medford’s first 3 to get the Raiders on the board. Hayden Koester got a rebound bucket and assisted on a Devin Dassow lay-in for a 7-5 lead, then the teams combined for 3-pointers on the next nine made field goals.
Krause hit his first one for a 10-5 lead. He hit two more to get the lead to 19-11. Jason Woller hit from the right corner and Gierl sank his second 3 of the half for a 25-14 lead. Page got to the rim to end the 3-point spree, Koester answered with another putback, then Merrill went on a 10-0 run to wipe out Medford’s lead. Cooper Wendorf and Jacob Schmeltzer hit back-to-back 3s in the run with Schmeltzer’s triple being his third of the half.
The lead then bounced back and forth with Raider Will Wojcik hitting a 3pointer from the right side with 10 seconds left to give Medford a 36-34 halftime lead.
Gierl started the second half with a leftwing 3-ball for a 39-34 lead, but EJ Weix, who led Merrill with 18 points, answered with a triple of his own. Page got a backcourt steal and fed Tyson Ott for the tying basket, Ott then scored to give Merrill a 41-39 lead. Gierl got another 3ball to fall to put Medford up 42-41, but Merrill went on an 11-0 run that turned the game around. Page sparked it with a steal that led to a Wendorf hoop and he put back his own miss. Weix also scored by rebounding his own miss.
“Having another guy being able to do some stuff helped them but I never felt like our defense never made them uncomfortable, which is too bad,” Brown said. “I think we’ve taken a step back defensively this last week, week and a half, as far as getting into guys, pushing them where we want, being early on defense, rotating.”
Now down 52-42 after a Page 3, the Raiders spend the rest of the game trying to eat into a 10- to 12-point deficit. They got it to 59-54 after Gierl’s steal gave Koester a follow-up hoop. Krause’s sixth 3 of the night made it 62-57 with 2:30 left and the Raiders got a stop but turned it over in transition. A couple of similar mistakes hurt them when they had chances to draw closer in the last five minutes.
“We had some opportunities where we closed the gap and then we forced a couple of shots and had a couple of untimely turnovers where we didn’t allow ourselves to really ever crack into that five- or sixpoint deficit,” Brown said. “They were kind of silly ones. I know guys were trying to play faster, but sometimes you have to play smart. There was more time on the clock maybe than they felt or thought. When there’s five minutes and you’re down five or six points you still have time to do some things. When it’s a two or three possession game, yes let’s look at your opportunities to go but be smart with it.”
Schmeltzer, who had been quiet since the first half, drilled the dagger from the left corner with 1:33 left making it 66-57. Devin Dassow hit a 3 for Medford with 1:04 to go, but the Raiders got no closer than six in the last minute.
Dassow and Koester both were three of three from the field. Dassow had nine points and three assists. Koester finished with six points, seven assists and five rebounds before fouling out with 1:47 left. Wojcik had five points and Woller and Ried wound up with three each. Ried had four rebounds and four assists. Krause had three assists as well.
Ott scored 15 points and Schmeltzer had 12 for Merrill, who broke the program’s five-game losing streak to Medford dating back to the 2020-21 season.
Medford heads to the River Falls holiday event Dec. 30-31. The Raiders will play New Richmond (1-5) Monday at 3:45 p.m. and the host Wildcats (3-1) on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m.
“The focus is still going to be all year on taking care of the basketball,” Brown said. “Hopefully we get there eventually. We know we have a tough holiday tournament coming up. A lot of what we’re seeing now is what we saw this summer and we didn’t see a lot of that in these first couple of games. Obviously the quality of our opponents went up.”
Medford’s Devin Dassow bounces a pass to a teammate out of the high post during the first half of Thursday’s loss. MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS
