Bonduel boys basketball team cruises past Green Bay West

Westrich leads balanced Bears’ attack
By: 
Morgan Rode
Sports Editor

The Bonduel High School boys basketball team led from start to finish during a 64-42 nonconference win over Green Bay West on Jan. 30 in Bonduel.

Plenty of Bears saw game action, and nine of the 11 players who took the floor scored.

“It’s great. I feel like we all deserve to be on the court,” said freshman big man Ryan Westrich, who led Bonduel with 19 points and 16 rebounds. “We all know that we can score and we all know that we can play tough basketball, and I’m just really glad that we all stepped up today.”

Westrich was part of the reason why Bonduel jumped out to a 10-2 lead in less than four minutes. He hit two free throws to open the scoring and later had a three-point play.

Charlie Tauchen had the team’s other five points on the run, including a 3-pointer.

Green Bay West settled in a bit after that, but Bonduel was still able to maintain control pretty much the entire game.

Brodie Hartmann scored five straight points for Bonduel before Westrich converted two more looks. A 3-pointer from Tauchen and Westrich basket made it a 24-7 advantage.

The visitors scored the next five points, but back-to-back layups from Noah Weier, and a third layup a bit later, kept Bonduel comfortably ahead.

“We knew we had to come out and just right from the get-go step on the gas and get a lead,” said Weier. “We kind of came out a little slow and let their intensity get to us, but we picked it up, started playing harder. We know that when we play hard, we can play with anyone…”

Sam Roberts, Race Anvelink and Cade Johnson scored the Bears’ final points of the half, leaving the team with a 35-20 advantage.

Bonduel kept rolling in the second half, scoring the first eight points. Westrich scored on the first possession and then hit the first of back-to-back 3-pointers, with Margelofsky having the other.

Green Bay West responded with a 9-0 run to make it a 14-point contest, but a second-chance bucket from Westrich and fastbreak score from Johnson got Bonduel right back on track.

A bit later, Anvelink knocked down a couple 3-pointers to push the lead over 20 again, and Bonduel coasted to victory from there.

“In the first half, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, we didn’t play very good defense for our standards,” said Westrich. “But we picked it up during the second half thanks to our coach getting on our case about not hedging enough and not playing hard enough. I think that really helped us in the end there playing great defense.”

Behind Westrich’s double-double, it was a balanced scoring approach for the Bears.

Roberts ended up hitting four shots to finish with eight points, while Tauchen also had eight. Anvelink tallied seven points, while Weier had six. Margelofsky and Hartmann had five points each.

Green Bay West 20 22 — 42

Bonduel 35 29 — 64

Bonduel (64): Cade Johnson 0-0 4, Colin Margelofsky 2-3 5, Brodie Hartmann 0-0 5, Ryan Westrich 4-5 19, Charlie Tauchen 0-0 8, Noah Weier 0-0 6, Race Anvelink 1-2 7, Owen Springborn 0-0 2, Sam Roberts 0-1 8.

Green Bay West (42): Dakotah Montez 1-2 4, Brandon Wilson 0-0 8, Marion Padilla 2-2 8, Deonte Steele 0-2 9, Landon Dudley 0-0 2, Khalid Ali 0-0 3, Julrus Connor 1-2 8.

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