Bison are back after 20-day break, postponed on Tuesday

McCOOK, Neb. — Consider it wasn’t even officially winter when McCook last played varsity basketball on Saturday, Dec. 17.

The Minnesota Vikings delivered an all-time greatest NFL comeback that day and then flamed out miserably in hideous Green Bay cheesehead Lambeau Field.

McCook salvaged that Dec. 17 with a doubleheader sweep at Holdrege where the Bison boys won a double-overtime thriller over Holdrege, 89-79.

Now there’s a chance to show even more success tonight when the 4-4 Gothenburg Swedes invade McCook High.

“I feel like we’ve had a handful of players who have improved since our last game and as a team I think we’ve made a jump in the right direction,” coach Joe Imus remarked about the 6-1 Bison. “Both Gothenburg and Sidney (Saturday) are solid teams. The biggest thing in these two games is that we need to apply what we’ve been doing in practice.”

Sidney’s 7-2 entering the first basketball weekend of 2023.

Sadly, the Bison must move on without sophomore forward Gabe Gans.

He suffered a season-ending knee injury during Bison practice since his team-high 20 points at Holdrege 20 nights ago.

“Yeah, that stinks,” Imus agreed about the Gans injury.

Gothenburg beat Holdrege, 61-55, besides double-digit wins over Lexington, Hershey and Lawrence-Nelson.

The Sidney Red Raiders are averaging more than 70 points through their nine contests. Watch for details.

McCOOK, Neb. — McCook coach Amy Scheil offered some final remarks about tonight’s game against Gothenburg and Saturday vs. Sidney.

Both teams are top 10 in power points of their classes with one loss each.

“I’m excited to get back to playing games. We’ve had about a 3 week game lay-off so hopefully there is not too much rust build up from not playing in a competition. The girls have been practicing well and have really come together as a team and we have been able to work on sharpening our fundamentals. We have some very tough teams coming up on our schedule with Gothenburg, Sidney and Minden all being rated, but we have played tough teams all season and have competed well. Hopefully we can get over the hump and start winning the close games.

We are controlling ourselves much better in practice and taking care of the ball better. In our past games the girls have played really good defense and our shots haven’t been constantly going in so we have lost some close games. The girls have been working hard on their shots and also looking for others on their team to set their teammates up for good shots, so hopefully that carries over to games.”