HURON – Things did not come down the wire for Aberdeen Christian Thursday night.
The Knights jumped in front early and stayed in control on the way to a 71-48 non-conference boys’ basketball win over James Valley Christian.
“It was fun to have a win where it wasn’t close in the fourth quarter, because it’s been a little while for that,” said Knights coach Matt Rohrbach. “And sometimes when you lose a game and you have high expectations for your team, it feels like a loss is five losses. And the guys were kind of feeling that after losing to Timber Lake. But it was nice to get our mojo back.”
Christian jumped out to an early 9-2 lead in the first four minutes of the game with Brooks Jett scoring six points. JVC came out in a zone, and the Knights executed their plan to beat it, getting the ball inside to Jett.
“That’s what you have to do against zones, because if you don’t get inside, then you’re pretty much relying on making 3’s,” Rohrbach said. “And for him to have the start that he did was super key, but it wasn’t just him. It was, Grady (Jett) found him a couple times, Luke (Kaiser) found him and Dylan (Hofer) found him. And we were swinging the ball and doing what we needed to do.”
The other points in that run came from Jett Johnson as he nailed a 3-pointer. That set the pace for the senior as he went on to make two more from beyond the arc, and another inside shot for an 11-point night.
“He hit one early to give us that 5-0 lead. It’s just huge when that first 3 goes in honestly,” Rohrbach said. “And it’s always fun when you hit a couple more. Especially in that third quarter to just kind of break things open.”
The Knights also excelled in rebounds, where they finished with 36 total rebounds, 15 of them being offensive. Brooks Jett led the way with five offensive and five defensive rebounds on the night.
“He’s such a good athlete and he was hanging around the rim the entire night, and they just had such a hard time boxing him out, because we had other guys crashing like Grady and Luke and Loyal (Smith-Wade),” said Rohrbach. “It’s just super fun to coach these guys when they’re understanding where they need to be.”
Hofer knew where he needed to be defensively as he forced five steals, many of which led to fastbreak points.
“He’s insane. I mean we said that so many times on the bench, just like this kid’s incredible. He’s all over the place,” Rohrbach said. “Just to have a luxury of not just the energy, and the easy points and the easy steals, but just the way he gets everybody else going.”
Brooks Jett finished with 23 points. Hofer and Raymond Rodriguez-Martinez also added 11 points to the Knights’ total.
Christian, 9-2 on the season, will now gear up for a road game against North Central on Tuesday.
ABERDEEN CHRISTIAN (9-2): Jett Johnson 4 0-0 11, Dylan Hofer 5 1-2 11, Grady Jett 1 1-2 4, Luke Kaiser 3 1-1 7, Brooks Jett 11 1-4 23, Loyal Smith-Wade 1 0-0 2, Raymond Rodriguez-Martinez 4 1-1 11, Charles Eichler 2 0-0 4. Totals 31 5-10 71
James Valley Christian (7-5): Scoring not available
Aberdeen Christian 12 33 53 71
James Valley Christian 8 18 31 48
