SOLOMON—
The Solomon High School basketball teams played host to the Inman Teuton basketball teams Tuesday night and Inman must have felt really welcome in Solomon’s Jungle.Both games were tight all the way through, but in both games Inman was able to pick up strength towards the end of the games and pick up victories. Inman won the girls game 40-33 and then completed the sweep with a 61-55 win in the boys game.
The Solomon girls have just one win on the season while the Solomon boys are still searching for their first win of the season, despite statistically being in every game it has played this season.
"I thought our kids fought really hard," Inman boys head coach Brett Froese said. "That Solomon team hasn’t won a game but that is a good Solomon team. I thought our kids kids really fought well."
The girls’ game between the two teams saw three lead changes and five ties, including a 33-33 knot with 2:37 remaining before Inman closed out the game with the final 7 points, five coming from the charity stripe to pick up the victory.
"We got off to a good start and our pressure kind of bothered them," Inman girls coach Jeff Friesen said. "They did a really good job in the second half, that we had success with, they countered it really well. … It was just a case if they would have gotten the lead they might have played a little bit different and we might have played a bit tighter and the outcome would have been different."
The Lady Teutons were led by Ashlyn Wienes, who finished the game with 10 points and was the only Inman player to score in dboule figures. Solomon was led by morgan Jantz, who hit two 3-pointers and finished with 10 points.
The boys game was much the same as it saw nine lead changes and seven ties before Inman pulled away in the second half to earn its third win of the season.
Inman won the first quarter 11-10 and the second quarter 13-12 to give the Teutons a 24-22 lead at intermission.
Inman had its biggest quarter in the third when it outscored Solomon 20-14 to build a 44-36 lead. Solomon outscored Inman in the final period, but it was not enough.
Inman, who was led by Lance Schroeder’s 21 points while Blake Druecker and Alex Ropp pitched in 10 points each, went into the game focusing on slowing down Solomon’s Josh Burdine.
Burdine scored 12 points for the Gorillas, but that was below his season average and Inman was able to slow the rest of the Gorillas down enough to seal the win.
Solomon was led in scoring by Burdine, Colton Shirack and Craig Weise, who finished with 12 points each. But Burdine has been averaging above 20 points per game this season.
"We really worked the last couple of days of taking away their Burdine kid," Froese said. "He is a great player, averaging about 30 points per game and he shoots it a lot. So their offense goes through him.
"We worked the last two days of just trying to keep him from catching it. We did a good job with our game plan. … I think we frustrated the Burdine kid all night. "
