Hodag Hoops falters in showdown with Wisconsin Dells

WISCONSIN DELLS — If the Rhinelander High School boys’ basketball team wants to win the Great Northern Conference and make a deep run in the WIAA tournament, it’s going to need to get through tall, athletic teams like Mosinee and Wausau East.

Saturday’s road test against a tall, athletic team showed the Hodags have a long way go to be competitive in that regard. 

Rhinelander came up short in its first true test of the season, committing 36 turnovers in a 70-42 loss to Wisconsin Dells on the road. It was the Hodags’ first loss of the season, and it came in stunning fashion as the Chiefs used their combination of height and speed to outscore the Hodags 51-18 in the second half.

The Hodags had moved to 7-0 a day earlier with a 76-48 win over Ripon in the Dells, but Saturday’s game — apart from one stellar run midway through the first half — was a trainwreck from start to finish.

“The wheels fell off of the bus and we just went screaming off the highway,” coach Derek Lemmens said. “We didn’t execute things. It was a terrible game, and when you play that poorly against a good team, they’re going to run with it.”

    Rhinelander’s Jatyn Barkus has the ball stripped by a combination of Wisconsin Dell’s Jaren Ward (0) and Cooper Whitehurst during the second half of a non-conference boys’ basketball game in Wisconsin Dells Saturday, Dec. 28. Rhinelander committed a season-high 36 turnovers in Saturday’s 70-42 defeat. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

It was a perfect storm of the Hodags against a Chiefs’ team (6-2) that was ranked inside the top 10 in Division 3 earlier in the year. Six-foot-nine forward Jaren Ward dominated inside with 32 points and 17 rebounds while the combination of guards Isaiah Hanna-Funmaker and Brady Young racked up a combined 30 points and 16 steals between them. 

Meanwhile, Rhinelander was in the second day of back-to-back games and simply did not make shots. The Hodags were only 34.8% from the field, 7 of 28 from beyond the arc, and were outscored 60-16 in the paint. What’s more, Rhinelander was without leading scorer Truman Lamers, who played Friday but left before Saturday’s game due to a family commitment. 

“You know, I think we got tired,” Lemmens said. “We’re down a couple of rotation guys, and I was disappointed, really, with the way we responded when mistakes did happen — you know, the hanging our heads and then we really got tentative and scared and just everything we did was overthinking and scared. We just played scared. and it was just really disappointing.”

The Chiefs’ trapping half-court defense stunned Rhinelander right out of the gate as the Hodags fell behind 13-1 just 6:21 into the contest following three straight steals and finishes in transition by Young. The Hodags appeared to find their footing from there, going on a 21-2 run that including seven points from forward Evan Shoeder and three straight triples from Devon Feck, to pull ahead 22-15 with 6:30 before halftime. Rhinelander went cold again after that, but so did the Dells. Jatyn Barkus hit a pull-up eight footer just before the horn to give Rhinelander a 24-19 lead at halftime. 

As soon as the second half started, Rhinelander’s chances effectively ended. The Chiefs started the half on a 22-0 run over the first six minutes as the turnover woes retuned for the Hodags. Further complicating matters, Rhinelander suddenly had no answer for Ward in the paint. He scored 24 points in the second half on 12-of-13 shooting. 

“I thought they were kind of getting tired and in reality, it was us,” Lemmens said. “They got sparked when we were turning the ball over, we gave them points in transition. They were struggling to score in the half court. So when we started giving them free points and again, our response to adversity was disappointing. So hopefully it’s something we learn from, we improve on and we just makes us a better team moving forward.”

Feck scored 14 points to lead Rhinelander while Barkus had 11. Meanwhile Rhinelander’s forwards, consistent producers during the Hodags’ seven-game winning streak, were silenced Saturday. Shoeder didn’t score again following the seven points he had in Rhinelander’s first-half run. Abe Gretzinger was held to four points and Hayden Schommer went scoreless.

The turnovers were the most staggering stat. Rhinelander’s primary ball handlers, Barkus, Feck and Seth Nofftz, had 28 between them on Saturday. It’s something Lemmens called, “a great awakening.” 

“We’ve been concerned about turnovers and just the crispness of our passes and just some of the ways we execute things. We’ve gotten away with it, and now it’s front and center, all these flaws,” he said. “That’s what’s nice about this. These flaws, they really show themselves. And you can’t say, well, I can get by. Now we saw we can’t get by. So, if that’s how you’re going to play, then this is what’s going to happen against good teams.”

Rhinelander 76, Ripon 48

The Hodags led wire-to-wire Friday as they defeated the Tigers, but Ripon (1-8) hung around into the early stages of the second half before Rhinelander finally went on a big run to put the game out of reach. 

Feck scored 19 points and Lamers added 13 for the Hodags, who shot 43% from the field but struggled again from deep — shooting 6 of 21. Meanwhile, Ripon was 9 of 17 from 3-point range. That included six triples from Blake Bradley, who finished with a game-high 20 points. 

Rhinelander led 31-21 at the break, but the Tigers cut the lead to six over the first three minutes of the second half before the Hodags finally got some separation. Rhinelander went on a 26-5 run from there to put the lead to 27 with 9:19 remaining.

“That first half we took difficult shots, which we don’t need to do,” Lemmens said. “We don’t need to take difficult shots. We had some bad breaks where that led to some baskets for them and the second half we just cleaned things up. We kept it simple and we just we executed much better.”

Wausau East ahead

The Hodags will be tested again tonight coming out of the holiday break as they travel to Wausau East for a pivotal non-conference contest with potential playoff implications come March. 

Wausau East was ranked just ahead of Rhinelander at No. 9 in last week’s D2 coaches poll and was the No. 1 seed in the regional for the playoffs last year. 

Lemmens said tonight’s game will be a matter of how Rhinelander responds against an East squad that’s 9-1 on the year and averaging 75.5 points a contest.

“That’s what I’m curious to see. This is a very skilled group. We know that. But we also know this is kind of who we can be at times, so this is something we’ve got to mature from and move past,” he said.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].