By Brooklyn Himmelberg
On Saturday, January 11th the Mustangs took on the Red Hornets. Coach Shaun Fisher said, “Our goal for the night was to take care of the basketball and execute offensively. We knew Heartland-Lutheran was going to bring their best game, so we had to step up to the challenge.” The first quarter started out strong and the Mustangs had an 11-point lead. The end of the first quarter was 14-3. The second quarter came around and the Mustangs added 11 more points and only allowed the Red Hornets to have 6 points to end the first half. The end of the first half was a score of 25-6 in the Mustang’s favor. In the third quarter the Mustangs scored nine points and ended the quarter with a 34-18 lead. The Mustang’s defense came out hot during the 4th quarter and kept the Red Hornets from scoring any points. The overall score of the game was 42-18. Point leaders for the game were junior Landon Duester with 13 points and senior Blake Cantrell with 8 points. The leaders in rebounds were Duester with seven rebounds and senior Casey Conway with six rebounds. Coach Shaun Fisher stated, “I feel we didn’t play our best to start out the game but coming off a big night, the night before was difficult. Later in the game the guys stepped up and were able to take a bigger lead and withstand it the rest of the game.”
Next on the Mustang’s schedule was the Harvard Cardinals. After a much-needed 5 day stretch with no games, they faced off against the Cardinals on Friday, January 17th. In the first quarter, the Mustangs had taken a lead of 16-0. In the second quarter, the Mustangs added to their lead and gained 25 points. The first half had ended with a 41-point lead. The Mustangs played excellent defense and held the Cardinals scoreless in the first half for the first time all year. In the third quarter, the Mustangs had gained 10 more points onto their lead. The end of the third quarter was 52-2. The Mustangs had now made the whole fourth quarter running clock and were able to get it done in eight minutes. The Mustangs added eight more points in the fourth quarter, while Harvard added 7 themselves. The final score of the game was 59-9 in the Mustang’s favor.
The Mustang’s leading scorers for the game were junior Landon Duester with 14 points and junior Beau Bonifas with 10 points. Leaders for rebounds were Duester with six rebounds, and senior Lane Conway and junior Jaxon tenBensel with 5 each. The team improved their record to 8-4 for the season.