By John Rittenhouse
The Hills-Beaver Creek boys came out on the winning end of a basketball shoot-out in Slayton Friday.
The Patriots and the Murray County Central Rebels made a combined 65 field goals and scored 165 points during a high-scoring contest that fell in favor of H-BC by an 88-77 margin.
H-BC coach Steve Wiertzema was pleased with the way his team played offensively while winning its third consecutive game.
The coach, however, was less than happy with the effort on defense.
"We played well offensively," he said. "We made 53 percent of our field goals. I wasn’t very happy with our play defensively. It looked like a Sunday afternoon open-gym game to me."
No matter what it looked like, the Patriots improved their record to 4-2 by outscoring the Rebels by 11 points.
H-BC led 27-13 after eight minutes of play and sported a six-point advantage (50-44) at the intermission.
Patriot Tyson Metzger, who scored a career-high 28 points to go along with 12 rebounds and seven assists, helped H-BC expand its cushion to 14 points (71-57) by the end of the third quarter by netting six counters in the stanza.
MCC used a 20-17 scoring edge in the fourth quarter to make it an 11-point difference at game’s end.
Kale Wiertzema added 14 points, seven assists, seven steals and six rebounds to the winning cause. Tyler Bush added 13 points and seven steals. Jesse Leuthold pulled down eight rebounds. Trey Wan Wyhe and Clint Roozenboom chipped in 14 and 10 points respectively.
H-BC hosts unbeaten Ellsworth Jan. 3.
Box score
Bush 5 0 3-5 13, Wysong 2 0 0-0 4, Roozenboom 5 0 0-0 10, Wiertzema 4 0 6-8 14, Metzger 12 0 4-5 28, Leuthold 0 0 2-4 2, Van Wyhe 6 0 2-4 14, Spykerboer 0 0 3-4 3.
Team statistics
H-BC: 34 of 64 field goals (53 percent), 20 of 30 free throws (67 percent), 35 rebounds, 19 turnovers.
MCC: 31 of 60 field goals (52 percent), three of eight free throws (38 percent), 28 rebounds, 26 turnovers.