Willmar tournament

A nine-minute long scoring drought spelled doom for the B-B-E Jaguars boys' basketball team in the second day of action at Willmar. The MACCRAY Wolverines won 43-38 after holding a 27-17 halftime lead. The Jaguars cut it down to 39 to 36 with 45 seconds left.

Needless to say, it was a very difficult loss to swallow. The Jaguars (3-6) had a magnificent start, jumping on the Wolverines with early leads of 5-0 and 13-5. Parker Schwinghammer nailed two threes in the opening minutes. His second three put the Jaguars up 13-5 with 13 minutes left in the first half.

After Evan Wiener scored in the paint with 11 minutes left, B-B-E held a 15-7 lead. They did not score again until the clock said 2:02. Wiener hit another shot in the paint at that point, but MACCRAY (2-8 overall) was ahead 24-17. The Jaguars were outscored 17-0 in that nine-minute stretch.

Below, video from the first half of the game:

Here's video from the final 3:14 of the game:

Next: B-B-E travels to Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted in conference action on Friday, January 5. The Lakers are 3-5 overall and just went 1-1 in a vacation tournament.

Here's a web link to the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper's Smugmug photo gallery of the sports albums (through December 21): https://bonanzavalley.smugmug.com/BBE-Jaguar-winter-sports-17-18.

In the preceding game, winless Central Minnesota Christian-Prinsburg defeated Sauk Centre 70-67 to improve to 1-7 on the season. The Mainstreeters fell to 6-3 overall. The Bluejays were ranked No. 159 in the latest Class 1A QRF rankings; the Mainstreeters were No. 37 in Class 2A.

Today is a milestone day!! This sports blog, the longest-running high school blog in the state of Minnesota, surpassed 500,000 page views. It was created in October 2006.

More to come. Time for some open gym at the high school!!

Area boys' basketball scores on December 30:
Pipestone Area 67, Canby 39
Rocori 75, Princeton 67
Jackson County Central 94, Montevideo 69
Renville County West 47, Fond du Lac Ojibwe 45
Big Lake 66, St. Cloud Apollo 58
Langford Area (SD) 71, Dawson-Boyd 53, Central MN Christian 70, Sauk Centre 67
BOLD 84, Lac qui Parle Valley 62
Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg 53, Tracy-Milroy-Balaton 36 (Fighting Saints finish 2-0 at the Windom tournament to take home the championship; they edged out the host Windom Eagles 61-58 in overtime in the Friday game, a huge upset win for them against a team that entered the tournament 7-2 overall and ranked No. 24 in Class 2A, K-M-S ranked No. 98 in Class 1A)
Willmar 67, New London-Spicer 56