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Lions win joust with Knights

Bishop Ryan advances to Region 6 championship, beats in-city rival Our Redeemer’s

Sean Arbaut/Special to the MDN Bishop Ryan's Anthony Vetter (32) puts up a layup during a Region 6 boys basketball game Thursday at the MSU Dome.

This was a boys basketball game that didn’t need much dramatic build up.

By Thursday night’s contest, most high school basketball fans in the city of Minot knew the storylines surrounding Our Redeemer’s and Bishop Ryan.

A former Knights coach now roaming the Lions’ baseline in Jeremy Feller. An Our Redeemer’s squad that was on a quest for redemption after being embarrassed by the Lions in the team’s first meeting, a 66-45 defeat on Jan. 23 in its own building.

In the encore Thursday, the Lions didn’t dictate the pace from the start, but eventually prevailed in a comfortable 62-40 victory.

“It’s a credit to the kids, we played well,” Feller said. “Down the stretch, we held them to two points in the fourth quarter. You’re going to win a lot of games when you can lock down defensively like that. I loved our defensive intensity, and we never got too high or too low on ourselves.”

Sean Arbaut/Special to the MDN Bishop Ryan's Mason Hedberg (5) takes a 3-pointer Thursday.

With the victory, Ryan advances to the Region 6 championship against Rugby at 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Minot Auditorium. In their lone meeting this season, the Lions beat Rugby 68-51.

“They play hard,” Feller said. “They get out and run. We just have to take care of the ball. We worked on taking on the 1-3-1 zone a lot in practice this week in case we got matched up with Velva or Rugby. We’ve prepared for it. We just need to make good decisions, and that’s what we did in the second half last time against Rugby.”

The Knights played Ryan tightly in the first half, trailing 18-15 after one and 33-27 at halftime.

“In the first half, I thought we let the game come to us. We didn’t force things,” ORCS coach Mark LaCroix said. “We played as a team a lot more, we didn’t try to just make everything one-on-one. The second half, we forced a lot more things instead of just playing together.”

ORCS reduced deficit to 35-33 in third quarter, then was outscored by Ryan 27-7 the rest of the way.

“We really wanted to focus on our defense tonight,” Ryan junior guard Ben Bohl said. “Our defense leads to our offense, we preach getting stops so we can get the ball back. When we are locked in defensively, that’s when we’re playing our best.”

Bohl had a game-high 24 points and nine rebounds, while Anthony Vetter chipped in 16 points. The Lions shot 40 percent from the floor, 3-of-15 from beyond the arc and won the rebounding battle 35-26.

Noah Abel and Matthew Hendrickson each scored 10 points to lead ORCS, as the Knights shot 34 percent from the floor, 4-of-20 from beyond the arc and 2-of-6 at the free throw line.

Garrick Hodge covers Minot State athletics, the Minot Minotauros and high school sports. Follow him on Twitter @Garrick_Hodge

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