The Aplington-Parkersburg basketball teams took care of business in a doubleheader sweep at Columbus Catholic Friday, as aired on 104.9 KLMJ and RadioOnTheGo’s YouTube channel. The girls won 71-22 and the boys won 68-53.
The girls shut out the Sailors in the first quarter on their way to the lopsided win. On an efficient shooting night, they connected on 51 percent for their best outing of the season so far, led by Lorna Bernard with 17 points.
“It was a good start for us,” Head Coach Brady Driscol says. “I thought we handled the ball alright in the first quarter, rebounded alright in the first quarter as well. Obviously, you hold somebody to zero is a good defensive effort on the quarter. So I’m proud of that effort. And then we needed to keep working some different defenses for future games if we need to go to it. So we switched it up there and went man. And it’s definitely a work in progress for sure. But no better time to try it out. You practice it, but when you get to a game, it can be totally different. So I’m glad we could get three quarters worth of some different defenses in there and some different rotations of kids in there.”
Kiara Morris scored 15 and Kolbie Wangsness added 13.
In the boys game, the Sailors had the early advantage, leading for most of the first quarter. But Trevan Thomas hit a tying three-pointer just before the period expired, and they never trailed again. Columbus remained scrappy by going point-for-point throughout the third quarter, but the Falcons won the fourth 22-15 to secure the win.
“Heck of an atmosphere for a high school basketball game,” Head Coach Aaron Thomas says. “I know Coach Drew always talked about when he played here at Columbus and how it got rocking, and I could not be prouder of our guys. We didn’t get rattled. We knew they’d come out swinging. They played very well to start, and our guys I thought really defended. Our offense started to execute, and credit to Cole Brouwer. We told our guys we want to throw it into the post and play through the post. We knew they’d be very tight on Tyler. Cole really stepped up tonight. And then other guys, I can think of a couple of times, Trevan or Wes hit some big shots when we needed them. And then I thought our patience and the way we executed our offensive, a lot of that stuff, I was talking to them on the fly. We hadn’t really practiced some of that, and they did an unbelievable job of listening. I just couldn’t be prouder of our assistant coaches. I thought we had a great plan, and credit to those guys for helping with that.”
Cole Brouwer led with 22 points, Tyler Wedeking scored 17 and Wes Shirk added 11.
Both teams will return to action Monday by hosting Denver.
