Last Friday, Jan. 8, the Atlantic freshmen boys basketball team played against Denison in Atlantic. The team beat the Monarchs 50-34.

According to head freshmen coach, Brandon Krause, “They settled into the game pretty quick. They focused on offensive and defensive consistency, and they achieved that goal.”

Krause preached to the team all of last week in practice that they need to have more consistency on the defense and offense end. It seemed to have played out that way on Friday as they only gave up 34 points in 32 minutes, and had six different players score on the offensive end.

For the second game in a row Zade Niklasen and Nate Behrends played lights out defense as the rest of the team did. They held the Monarchs to only 11 points the first half and played some of their best basketball in the second quarter.

Offense also played well as they pounded the ball inside and gave Logan Reilly the ball to let him go to work. He scored a season high 17 points, and dominated the post.

“Our post play was aggressive against their zone, I really thought Denison struggled with our post physicality” said Krause. Sam Granner, Matt Gearheart, and Jalen Peterson also had big games, and showed “good leadership.”

This was a solid win coming out of a two game losing streak, the freshmen are looking to continue to improve.

“I’m really proud of these young men. We had a great week of practice and will continue to improve this week until we travel to Lewis Central on Friday” said Krause.