by Jena Brosam and Alyssa Siggins

Tuesday night, the Atlantic boys basketball team traveled to Carroll to take on the Kuemper Knights for the second matchup this season. The Trojans defeated the Knights 58-44 the first time around, but the Knights came back with a 66-49 victory over the Trojans. Atlantic’s record falls to 9-4. JV boys pulled through and won against the Knights 53-38.

Sophomore Garrett Franken was the leading scorer for the boys with 18 points. Junior Ryan Hawkins had 14, and senior Joey Walker scored eight.

Head coach Alan Jenkins said, “We struggled on both ends of the floor. We made a lot of mistakes that were quite uncharacteristic of us. Hopefully this is a learning moment that we can build on for the rest of the season.”

Guard and senior Tristen Benn said, “Kuemper came into the game ready to play hard, and we didn’t. We didn’t handle the ball and our offense wasn’t very strong.”

Point guard Joey Walker said the team fell apart in the third quarter. “We were down 2 at halftime and in the third quarter we came out and weren’t making shots. We started feeling sorry for ourselves. We weren’t playing hard on the defensive end. They just played harder than us in the second half.” Walker said the team knew it would be one of the most important games of the year. “We just sort of over-looked that.”

The team has been working hard to recover this week at practice. Walker said, “Although there weren’t any highlights of the game Tuesday night, we came into practice on Wednesday not feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve been focusing on ourselves this week, working on things we struggled with Tuesday night instead of scouting other teams.”

JV boys beat the Knights 58-33. Freshmen Grant Podhajsky said, “We played really well, we played a good Kuemper team most people thought we weren’t going to beat. We stepped up and won. In the second half we battled through some adversity. They tried to come back, but we just kept playing even after losing a few of our starters.”

Podhajsky said they gave Kuemper a lot of second chance opportunities, but the team pulled through and ended up beating a very strong team.

Jenkins said, “We have proven that we are a very good team, we are just looking for a consistency aspect each and every night.  Although we didn’t play our best on Tuesday, this is a fun team to coach that has matured leaps and bounds since last year.”

Friday night the Trojans took on the Clarinda Cardinals. Results and details of the game to come.