Vikes move to 11-5 with wins over Winside and Tri County NE

ALLEN — The Vikings took on the Tri County Northeast Wolfpack Jan. 20 with Wausa coming away with a 53-39 win after leading from start to finish.

Although the lead was start to finish, many moments for the final score remained in the balance.

Garrett Blanke was fouled with just over 30 seconds left in the first frame and made them both before Cashe Carlson canned a pair of charity tosses to put the lead at the half at 23-18 for the Vikings.

“We played tough tonight.” Wausa coach Tim Schindler said. “We got into our defense and it worked.”

The defense was a 1-3-1 trapping defense that people haven’t seen since “Killer” Kane days back at Elkhorn Mount Michael.

All of that didn’t matter as Wausa came away with the win by the two-touchdown final.

After the score was close early on, the Vikings came away with a plan to take care of the game.

“I told them to be aggressive and attack the ball,” Schindler said. “We wanted to get through this game and move along.”

Which is exactly what his team did. After only leading by five at the end of three, Wausa got busy closing out the game to take the Vikings to the win.

Jon Nissen grabbed an offensive rebound and put it back early in the basket to make it 25-18 for his team early in the third, then things got worse for the Wolfpack.

Garrett Blanke scored on the block for TCNE then Nissen hit a shot inside.

By the end of the frame, after a baseline take to the rim by Jaxon Claussen, the Vikings got busy.

TCNE wouldn’t go away in the third, but after a couple of additional buckets from Claussen the lead grew.

A three by Addison Smith for the Vikings ended scoring in the third frame with 18.6 seconds left, and Wausa was up 38-30 heading into the final stanza.

With the Conference tourney up next, the Vikes are letting everyone know they expect to make some noise. The Vikes got off to a slow start last week, falling

The Vikes got off to a slow start last week, falling to Elkhorn Valley 56-48, before bouncing back to beat Tri County Northeast 53-39 and Winside 58-47. “The guys did a lot of great things,” coach Schindler

“The guys did a lot of great things,” coach Schindler said. “We had a bad stretch in the third quarter that cost us against Elkhorn Valley. The Tri County game was physical. We played well enough on defense to win. Against Winside, we didn’t have much left for legs. We had some foul trouble throughout the game but got the win.”

Claussen (22 points) and Nissen (14 points) led Wausa in the Elkhorn Valley defeat. The two combined for another big game against Tri County as Claussen (21 points) and Nissen (16 points) set the tone.

Claussen went off for 31 points against Winside while Nissen added 10 points and Smith poured in nine points.

Claussen continued his scoring barrage after surpassing the 1,000-point barrier for his career the previous week. He said Elkhorn Valley was able to set the pace against the Vikings to get the win.

But the 2-1 record for the week is another example of taking care of business.

“If we can just keep busting our butts to keep beating these big teams, we could be in the big bracket for the conference tournament,” Claussen said. “Maybe we will keep on winning and that would be nice. We definitely play up to the competition. Those kind of games, I am not too worried about them.

“We shot amazingly against Winside, but our defense wasn’t great. We were just tired after backto-back games.”

Claussen didn’t want to make fatigue the excuse for the occasional rough performance.

“We just have to clean up the small things, those are what’s killing us right now,” Claussen said. “It’s about making sure we check out every time and grab the ball on rebounds and being strong with the ball. It’s not about running plays, because we can score on offense. We are just giving up too many extra shots.”

The Vikes play Summerland on Thursday.

“Summerland plays solid man-to-man and have some good athletes on the floor,” Schindler said. “Our goals are to just play the best ball we can by SubDistricts, he said. That involves great team defense, competing on the glass, and quality shots.”