December 22, 2022 at 7:27 a.m.
Hodag Hoops falls to Merrill 55-33
RHS held under 30%, loses fifth straight
Hodag Hoops falls to Merrill 55-33
Unfortunately for him, Bill Murray was nowhere to be seen and what he and the Hodags witnessed was far from a comedy.
The Hodag offense sputtered once again, scoring a season low in a 55-33 loss to Merrill at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium.
Rhinelander has failed to score 40 points in four of their seven games this season, and has still yet to break 40% from the field - shooting just 29.5% Tuesday night (13 of 44). The end result was another game where the Hodags fell behind early and could never recover.
"Groundhog Day, ironically, is the term I used at halftime," Lemmens said afterward. "We're watching the same thing over and over again. It's frustrating. Man, right now our basketball, believe it or not, is the least of our concerns. Our attitudes, our energy, those are the things that are getting in our way. That's something that I didn't foresee."
Tyson Glisch had a double-double for the Bluejays (3-3, 1-1 Wis. Valley), collecting 17 points and 10 rebounds. Bradyn Pieper added 15 points as Merrill led wire-to-wire.
The Bluejays opened the game on a 10-0 run. Rhinelander got back to within five roughly 7 1/2 minutes in, but Merrill went on a 12-3 spurt from there and took a 34-15 lead to the break. Things didn't go much better in the second half as Merrill stretched the lead to as many as 27 points.
Will Gretzinger had a team-high eight points for Rhinelander on 3 of 11 shooting. James Heck had six while Kyle Brown, who came in averaging 10.5 points per game, was held to 3 on 1 of 8 from the field.
Rhinelander was also dominated on the glass once again, as Merrill held a 44-15 rebounding edge. Already short on height, the Hodags were down starting 6-2 forward Max Ratty on Tuesday. The junior didn't play due to a lingering knee injury.
Asked if missing a starter affected his team's chemistry at the start, Lemmens said the problem for his squad is more complicated than that.
"I think we just had stale energy," he said. "That might come from what I do in the locker room, I'm not quite sure. I just didn't feel like we came our right away (ready to play). And Merrill did some good things. They switched (on defensive coverage) and showed us some different things, but we've been playing against switching defense all week (in practice)."
To wit, slow starts have plagued Rhinelander all season. Through seven games, the team is getting outscored on average 34-20 in the first half and is shooting just 30.7% in the opening stanza. Efficiency has also been an issue on both ends of the floor. Rhinelander is averaging just 0.68 points per possession in the first half, and is allowing 1.17 points per possession to its opponents.
Though Tuesday's game was a non-conference loss - with defeats to regional opponents Wausau East, Shawano, Mosinee and Merrill already on their resume - the Hodags are doing their seeding chances no favors come tournament time.
"We're not doing ourselves any favors but, we can't sit and dwell on that. We've got to figure out what we're going to do moving forward," Lemmens said. "Until we become a better team, it doesn't matter what position we're in. We have to take care of what we can take care of and what we can control - sharing the basketball, getting rhythm shots and then making shots, getting some confidence, getting some swagger and then, hopefully, we do enough to position ourselves to where we can at least have a chance come February."
The Hodags were slated to take on D.C. Everest Thursday, but that game was postponed and moved to Monday, Feb. 20 as a major winter storm was forecasted to move through the area Thursday night.
Rhinelander will return to action Dec. 28 when it hosts Ashland.
"I don't know much about Ashland yet. We've had a lot of games before them. I just know right now, it's hard to even watch film on anyone else because we have so many things that we have to do better before we can even think about our opponents," Lemmens said. "We have to start mastering ourselves and that's got to really be the step that we take starting tomorrow."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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