By John Raffel
Correspondent
MCBAIN – McBain’s boys basketball season came to an end at 20-6 on Wednesday with a 46-37 loss to Traverse City St. Francis in a Division 3 regional tournament title game at Lake City.
McBain had lost 61-49 to St. Francis in the regular season before winning three straight prior to Wednesday’s battle.
St. Francis goes into the quarterfinal at 22-4.
“We battled all night long,” McBain coach Bruce Koopman said. “We fell down 6-0. Then we battled back. We were down by two a couple of times. We were down 26-20 going into the half. “Unfortunately, Ben Rosenbaugh picked up his fourth foul in the second. I made a couple of adjustments defensively and they made us pay for it. The game broke open. We got it back to nine and one time were down by seven. They’re too good of a team to have to play catchup with.”
Evan Haverkamp had 11 points. Rosenbaugh had 10 points. McGillis had nine and Nathan Koetje had seven.
The Ramblers lose two senior starters Kalvin Mcgillis and Braylon Pace.
“St. Francis had Wyatt Nausadis who’s a tremendous player and you can’t really trap him. He does a great job finding his teammates,” Koopman said. “We didn’t quit. We battled. We represent McBain well. We won 20 games and a conference and district championship. That’s a very good St. Francis team.
“A year ago, we started out 1-10 but found a way to win eight games and a district. We have a lot of good kids back.”
McBain beat Shelby 53-42 in the regional semifinal on March 13 at Lake City.
The Ramblers had a first quarter lead of 10-8 but it was 21-21 game at halftime McBain led 37-32 after the first quarter.
“We couldn’t pull away in the first half,” Koopman said. “We got a couple of short leads, when we would turn it over and didn’t get back on defense. We broke it open in the third. We did enough to win.”