The Forest Lake boys basketball team saw an action-packed week filled with close and exciting section and Suburban East Conference matchups. The Rangers hosted a tight battle with the Andover Huskies on Tuesday, Feb. 6, and ultimately lost by a final score of 67-66 in a game that wasn’t decided until the final buzzer. Forest Lake entered the game on a hot five-game win streak.
In a back-and-forth bout, the game began with a 5-1 Andover run before Forest Lake knotted things back up at 5-all and began to take control of the game early in the first half of play. The Rangers jumped out to a 15-9 lead before the Huskies signaled for a timeout, as the squad had Andover rethinking its attack.
“In the first half, we did very well execution-wise on the offensive end of the floor. Feeding it to Owen [Waldoch], and feeding it to our other big in Braeden [Turk],” head coach Kyle McDonald said. “We were getting the ball inside – we shot something like 60% in the first half. We kept hitting bunnies and defensively we were good too at times – holding them to just 24 first-half points. That’s what gave us that 13-point lead.”
However, the short break didn’t do the Huskies any favors, as Forest Lake kept its foot on the gas to lead by as many as 14 points with just under 4 and a half minutes to go in the half. Senior point-guard Brennan Sauvageau was a main focal point for the Ranger offense throughout the first half, racking up 12 points and knocking down a pair of 3-pointers to make it a 37-24 game at halftime.
It was certainly a tale of two halves, as Andover slowly started creeping their way back into the game to cut down its deficit. A 10-0 run from the Huskies allowed the game to get close at a score of 49-41 – resulting in a Ranger timeout. Out of the timeout, Forest Lake put together an 8-4 run to lead by as many as 12 points once again at 57-45, as the Rangers looked firm on putting the game away. Leading 64-57 with 2:45 left in regulation, the Huskies orchestrated a 10-2 run in the final stages to snag the game away from Forest Lake, losing what one would call a heartbreaker.
McDonald gave insight into the process of dealing with such a tough loss.
“I think just going in after the game, it was a matter of what kind of lesson are we going to learn here,” McDonald said. “Of course, we were missing one of our better ball handlers on Tuesday with D.J. Westman out with a fever, but it was all about the lesson we were going to learn. Down the stretch, we had six or seven turnovers in our last 10 possessions – in a game like that against a section opponent, it was all about how we were going to respond on Friday night.”
Senior star Owen Waldoch scored 20 points on the night, while center Braeden Turk recorded a game-high 22 points in the loss.
Woodbury
Later that week on Friday, Feb. 9, the Rangers indeed responded. Forest Lake ultimately pulled out the 59-57 home victory versus SEC opponent Woodbury, learning its lesson from earlier in the week.
“Honestly, we kind of got ourselves in the same situation again with Woodbury. We got to learn from it and we got to execute,” McDonald said. “We watched some film on how we need to be a little bit better in some areas, especially near the end of a game. Like I said, we got into that same sort of situation again; this time we actually executed it all very well.”
The Rangers found themselves trailing by 3 points at the half 31-28. The second half brought intense action, with both teams making each and every possession count. As the game flowed throughout the remainder of the second half, Forest Lake was down 10 points at 57-47 with just over 5:30 left in the ball game – until McDonald called a timeout to rally his troops. The Rangers defense held strong in the final minutes – showcasing the opposite from Tuesday’s matchup – as the squad rallied to a 2-point lead over the Royals with just over a minute left to play.
“I was just proud of their response,” McDonald said. “We called a timeout there and we didn’t give up a point the rest of the way. It’s just the response that I had talked about previously after Tuesday. ... It comes down to one defensive stop and how we are going to defend. We got that stop we needed and came out winners on Friday night. I’m just proud of their response. It was a very tough loss on Tuesday night, but, like I said before, we learned our lesson and we came up on top and that’s really important.”
Waldoch powered the offensive attack with 29 points, while Sauvageau totaled 13 points. Senior forward Reid Olson scored 9 points.
With the bounce-back win, the Rangers have won five of their last six games to improve to a season record of 12-8 and enter the final quarter of the season on a hot stretch.
The Rangers played Mounds View on Tuesday, Feb. 13 in a contest that was not yet completed at press time.
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