By John Raffel
Correspondent
MCBAIN – McBain’s boys basketball team defeated Beal City 60-43 on Wednesday, Dec. 13, to improve to 4-0. The Ramblers last Friday beat Manton 80-49. McBain will host Kingsley on Dec. 20.
McBain against Beal had quarter scores of 15-10, 25-23, and 47-30.
Evan Haverkamp had 22 points for McBain.
“Darrious Pena had kind of a breakout game with 16 points,” McBain coach Bruce Koopman said. “Ben Rodenbaugh had 10 and Nate Koetje five.
“I thought for 28 minutes out of 32, we played very well defensively. We executed and rebounded. We had a three-minute lapse and the beginning of the second quarter where we went off script for a little while. Other than that, I thought our kids were locked in defensively. We rebounded on both ends very well. Haverkamp was a beast. They were double teaming and triple teaming him. Pena had two big dunks, rebounded and played the ball well and played good defense.
“Rodenbaugh is a great point guard. He can guard well and rebounded tough. Beal City is a good basketball team. This was a big win for us.”
McBain is 4-0 in the conference.
Against Manton, Haverkamp had 13 points, Clayton Heuker 12, Pena 10. Rodenbaugh nine, Trey Boven nine and seven apiece for Koetje, Aidan Koetje and Brett Eling.
“We’re playing with some good intensity and some good energy,” Koopman said. “We have to clean up a lot of little things offensively and defensively. We have to rotate better defensively. Offensively we have to be better on defense. We turn the ball over way too much. But we are playing a lot of guys. We are pretty deep.”