“I thought we played very well on Friday night,” Raider Head Coach Chris Stoebner said. “Our best game of the year.”
Mason Archambault, a 6-0 senior guard, certain to make the SDHSAA all hair-do first team, can also put it in the basket, whether driving in for a slam dunk, or draining a long three, and tallied 32 points and 5 boards, which helped Stevens take a 27-19 half time lead.
Stoebner credits this victory to an overall team effort, despite Archambault’s notable individual contribution: “We were really good defensively and rebounded with a much bigger team. Obviously Mason led the way with 32, but we had a lot of other guys step up. I thought Jordan Lawrence played really well, and Hawky Cummings was all over the boards, especially early. Cooper Bowman did a great job all night defending their best player, and one of the best players in the state, in Matt Cartwright. Jacob Martin boarded well and had a great floor game. Then we got contributions off the bench which were huge. Connor King, Andrew Cottier, Will Moore and Gib Elder gave us great minutes and really did a great job closing out the second quarter.”
Bowman and Jordan each had 8 points for Stevens. Martin added 6 points and 8 rebounds. The Raiders were 24-28 from the line, for 86%, outscoring the Knights by 10 points from the charity stripe. They outshot O’Gorman 47% to 26%.
Cartwright led O’Gorman with 18 points. J.P. Costello had 16 points and 7 rebounds. Jaron Zwagerman added 11 points and led all players with 9 rebounds.
On Saturday, Stevens stopped by Mitchell on the way back from Sioux Falls, and handed the struggling 0-7 Kernels a 60-44 defeat. The Raiders are now 5-1 on the season and have a week off before hosting Sturgis. Surprisingly, the Scoopers are 5-0, although they have yet to play a tough team like O’Gorman. Still, they lead AA District 4 with 43.00 seed points compared to 42.33 seed points for second place Stevens.
(James Giago Davies can be contacted at skindiesel@msn.com)
Leave a Reply