The Dike-New Hartford boys basketball team has two regular season games remaining, and is in a stretch of a week between games. Last week, they shot over 50 percent in a win over Sumner-Fredericksburg, but were less efficient by shooting lower than 30 percent in losses to Roland-Story and Hudson. Head Coach Alex Tagtow says Dawson Dietrick and Corbin McCarter have been reliable scorers through an up and down season.
“Both of those guys have been scoring it well for us really since Christmas break,” Tagtow says. “Dawson’s done a good job around the bucket, and he draws a lot of attention in there but still able to be productive in there, which is really great for us. We kind of put a lot on Corbin’s shoulders too. He’s got to get us into everything and bring the ball up the floor and still take a lot of shots for us, so he’s done a good job there. At this stage of the season, we’re trying to kind of get everybody else going too to come along with that, and we’ve had nights where that’s happened and nights where it hasn’t happened. We’ve kind of struggled offensively the nights where we couldn’t get the other guys going. Those two guys have been really steady for us, but it’s getting everybody else going and involved. That’s kind of been a struggle for us.”
Dietrick scores 13.4 per game, with 11 per game added by McCarter. Both have had several 20-plus point showings since the start of January.
Tagtow says offensive efficiency will complement a recent stretch of quality defensive outings.
“I think we’ve been able to be better on the defensive end really over the last few weeks. We’ve really started to figure out that end of the floor and understanding where we need to be and how that works for us to defend as a team. That’s been really great to see. And to be honest with you, we need to bring along the offense to match that. We’ve been good on the defensive end of the floor, understanding what other teams are trying to do to us and how we can take them out of that and handle our end. But on the offensive end of the floor, we’re kind of in and out of it. We have games where we’re really efficient. We have games where we’re not efficient. We have games where we turn it over a lot. So just being consistent on the offensive floor to go along with that kind of defensive identity we’ve been building is the thing we’ve got to do if we want to make a run here.”
They’ll return to action Friday at Oelwein.
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