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By TIM IRVING
“The boys grew up together, they want to camp together here, players from both teams. They’ve played AAU together, so to have a competitive game is pretty fun,”
Wheatland-Chili coach Scott Lund was smiling under his mask after his Wildcats topped Caledonia-Mumford, 67-57 to finish the regular season 17-3.
For the Raiders, it was all senior forward Scott Essig early on, he scored the first nine for Cal-Mum.
“I give Scotty a lot of credit, he was giving us match-up problems in the first half, whether he was knocking down a shot or getting to the basket,” Lund said.
Wheatland stayed in it as 6’4” senior Brendan Moore scored six of his 10 first half points in the opening quarter, 19-16 Raiders after eight minutes.
They game remained close with Cal-Mum leading most of the way until Aaron Lund, the youngest of coach Scott Lund’s four sons, scored a foul line jumper and then threw an outlet pass to Joshua Juneau that tied the game at 29.
Cal-Mum got its two point lead back with over a minute and a half to play on Kyle Wade’s baseline drive, 31-29 going into the break.
The Raiders, with Wade and Essig doing most of the damage, managed to keep the lead in the third until Lund scored with 2:15 left in the quarter to give the Wildcats their first lead, 43-42.
They built a 48-44 lead as freshman Leighton Williams scored on break. Essig converted a three-point play to cap an 18-point night and Wheatland led 48-47 heading to the fourth.
Lund then took over. Moore hit him on the backdoor cut for a 56-53 lead with four minutes to play.
“Brendan’s kind of a throwback. You don’t see many guys play the high post like that and when the attention goes to Aaron and Brendan, we bring in a third post player in Jahmere (Copper), “ Lund said of his big men.
With 1:39 to go, a double foul was called and the Wildcats took the ball out of bounds on the sideline. Williams lobbed the ball to Lund underneath and that put Wheatland up four.
Lund went 6-for-6 from the free throw line, finishing with a game-high 23 points.
“We said we wanted to be playing our best basketball in February and our last three games (wins over Oakfield-Alabama, Northstar Christian and Cal-Mum) are something to build on going into Sectionals,” Lund said.
The Wildcats are the second seed in Class D1 Sectionals. Seeded first is Avoca/Prattsburgh, who are unbeaten and the top ranked team in New York State.
“Northstar has the shooters and Oakfield puts on tremendous pressure and we handled the pressure without turning it over and Cal-Mum pushes the ball up the court. Avoca does all of those things well, so, tremendous respect for what Avoca does, we’ll try give ourselves a shot but we have to win a couple of games first,” said Lund.
Cal-Mum (15-5) will be either the second or third seed in Class C3.
SCORING
Wheatland-Chili
Terrance Bayly-Henshaw 5, Aaron Lund 23, Leighton Williams 14, Brendan Moore 14, Jahmere Copper 11.
Caledonia-Mumford
Alex Carnes 7, Evan Raniewicz 5, Scott Essig 18, Kyle Wade 18, Camden Reed 4, Nate Doll 5.
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