MANKATO — If there’s one thing the Mankato West boys basketball team is looking to establish as the season winds down is consistent play.
Tuesday night at the West gym, the Scarlets took a stride in the right direction as a 23-6 burst to open the second half triggered a 72-57 Section 2AAA victor over Marshall. Freshman forward Mal Jock showed tremendous versatility in firing in a team-best 21 points while junior guard Evan Senske’s ability to get to the rim produced 20 points as the Scarlets improved to 7-10 on the season.
“We really needed a reset after playing five games on the road,” West coach Jeremy Drexler said. “We had a tough week and the kids did a good job of resetting their brains yesterday in practice. I thought we came out and executed on offense while playing great defense. It was nice to get this win to sort of get that monkey off our back.
“We talked about not setting on offense. We’ve got a lot of guys who can score but we don’t always make that extra pass to get better shots. We’re still a young team so hopefully we can peak over the next four or five weeks. We’ve had trouble coming out of the half so it was nice to change that up with some adjustments. We were able to run our offense and get good looks.”
After senior forward Gus Schweim’s 8-foot fade-away jumper gave the Scarlets a 38-37 halftime lead, Jock’s follow-up basket and left-side 3-pointer ignited a game-changing run to begin the second half. Jock added a twisting inside basket, a 3-pointer off a nifty one-on-one move and layup after an interior spin move. Senske chipped in a trio of driving buckets and two free throws in the stretch.
“We came out with a lot of energy and shot the ball very well while defending,” Jock said. “We were able to get some momentum by the way we’re defending in the second half. My teammates were pushing through with a lot of motivation. We’re a bunch of young guys and we’re trying to push through every day at practice to get better. We had a lot of guys come off the bench and play. …. That’s a great feeling.”
Jock’s diving hustle play resulted in a Ryan Steinke layup to expand the margin to 63-47 with 6:21 to go. Steinke, a sophomore guard, finished with 14 points while Schweim and freshman guard Weston Olson contributed eight and six points, respectively. West connected on 30 of 54 from the field for 55.5% compared to the Tigers’ 25 of 55 for 45.4%. West won the boards 33-24 and committed more turnovers 9-8.
“We came out ready to play after four straight losses,” Senske said. “We were physical defensively and that was good to see. We knew we needed to stay focused and we came out doing our thing in the second half. We knew we had to play physical. We just need to stay focused in practice and keep things going.”
Marshall (7-9) was led by 6-foot-7 sophomore forward Oliver Voigt with 23 points and senior guard Levi Maeyaert with three triples.
West hosts Rochester Mayo Friday.