MANKATO — Well, that escalated quickly.
Senior guard Lucas Gustafson ignited an 18-0 run early in the second half Friday night as No. 7 Mankato East boys basketball dominated Rochester John Marshall 73-41 in a Big Nine Conference boys basketball game at the East gym.
East (13-5 overall, 9-4 in Big Nine) relied on a tenacious defensive effort to overcome early foul trouble to 6-foot-9 senior post Braden Petzel to claim a 30-21 halftime lead despite a somewhat sluggish half on the offensive end. Gustafson netted 14 of his team-best 18 points in the second half as a balanced scoring attack — Griffin Schott (12), Briggs Meyer (12), Petzel (11) and Amari Nobles (9) — enabled the Cougars to pull away.
“They’re a physical team and when they’re on defense they try to muck it up a little bit,” East coach Tony Ball said. “It takes some adjusting to that style and I felt we got a little bit impatient in the first half and didn’t get out in transition as much as we could half.
“In the second half, we sort of refocused and talked about some of the things we wanted to do defensively like take away their back cuts. They don’t shoot a lot of 3-pointers, they’re more efficient scoring around the basket. Once we got the opportunity to get out and run we wanted to really go because they have a shorter bench than we do,”
Schott, a junior guard, fired in a trio of his four 3-pointers in the first half while a pair of Cougars — Meyer and senior forward Abdullahi Mohamed — tallied six points apiece as East built a 30-21 advantage on Mohamed’s three-point play of a twisting drive to the cup and layup.
After Jackson Daly’s top-of-the-key 3-pointer pulled the Rockets (3-14, 2-8) within 42-30, Nobles’ banker and Gustafson’s nine-point flurry — a trio of bombs from beyond the arc — began the game-deciding surge. Petzel added two buckets and a free throw in the stretch while Nobles’ spin move closed things out and produced a 60-30 cushion with 6:32 to go.
“We made some good defensive stops in the first half but we were too fast on offense,” said Gustafson, who also collected six assists. “Not having Petz in the first half hurt us both offensively and defensively. We knew without him in there defensively that we would need to sit down more. They like to take longer possessions so we wanted to pack it in defensively. We slowed things down in the second half and got some better looks. We started to settle down and everyone began shooting well. Our defense kept turning into good offense and we were able to get Petz back in there.”
East connected on 29 of 50 from the field for 50% compared to the Rockets’ 17 of 41 for 41.4%. The Cougars won the boards 28-23 and committed fewer turnovers 19-10. Mohamed pulled down seven rebounds while Nobles totaled four rebounds and five assists. Schott contributed five assists.
“We turned things around in the second half,” Meyer said. “Our goal was to pass the ball around and find open shots. We’re a really good defensive team with a lot of people giving help on the back side. We started out a little jumpy but then we settled in and started getting our shots.
“We figured out what we needed to do.”
East plays Monday at Rochester Century.