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Scheffler, Tigers win big over Sleepy Eye

Staff photo by Steve Muscatello Springfield’s Decker Scheffler gets past Erizen Traconis (1) of Sleepy Eye on his way to the basket for a layup Tuesday at Sleepy Eye High School.

SLEEPY EYE — Springfield’s physical and up-tempo play was more than Sleepy Eye could handle on Tuesday night as the Tigers ran away with a 90-33 victory in Tomahawk Conference boys’ basketball action at Sleepy Eye High School.

Decker Scheffler led the Tigers with 32 points, seven rebounds and five assists, while Mitchell Buerkle added 14 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. Also for the Tigers, Dylan Rubey added 9 points, Brendon Buerkle and Mason Leonard added 7 points apiece and Ivan Hovland had eight rebounds.

For Sleepy Eye, Kegan Heiderscheidt led with 16 points, while AJ Ziegenhagen added 6 and Erizen Traconis chipped in 5.

The Tigers pushed the pace right away and forced Sleepy Eye turnovers throughout the game as a result.

Springfield head coach Lance Larson said that keeping the tempo up and staying aggressive is something his team has tried to do all season.

“That’s something we try to do every game, no matter who we play,” Larson said. “The [57] point win, obviously you come into a game like this and you’re heavily favored, you’ve just got to fight the lack of efforts and that kind of stuff like that. I thought we did a good job with that.”

A Ziegenhagen bucket gave the Indians their lone lead of the night at 2-0. Moments later the Tigers got an 8-0 run to lead 12-4, led by three buckets inside by Scheffler.

Heiderscheidt stopped the run with a corner 3 to have the Indians down 12-7. After that 3, however, the Tigers went on a 21-0 run to lead 33-7 before Heiderscheidt hit a deep jumper to break up the run.

Late in the half after an and-one by Scheffler, Traconis had a chance to cancel that and-one out with one of his own after being fouled on a bucket inside. His free throw was off, however, and was followed up with a Springfield rebound and pass down the court to Mitchell Buerkle, who beat the buzzer with a layup for a 51-14 Tigers lead at the half.

The Tigers jumped out to a 10-0 run in the second half before Heiderscheidt hit another 3 to stop the run and have the Indians down 61-17. The Tigers got another big 16-0 run later in the half to lead 83-22, their largest lead of the night. A 3 by Sleepy Eye’s Mason Sellner ended the Tigers’ run with less than seven minutes to play.

The Tigers, now 9-1 overall and 4-1 in the conference, host conference-leading Minnesota Valley Lutheran on Friday night. Larson said that his players will have to pay close attention to Dunwa Omot on Friday but also play their own style of game.

“It’s a big game for us, if we could win that, it would put us right back in the three-way race for the lead in the conference,” Larson said. “They’re really good, they’ve got five really good players, brought back everybody from last year other than Kettner and Munsen, but obviously the guy you’ve kind of got to key in on is Omot. That guy can score and he’s long and gets to the bank pretty well, I think I saw he shot 12 or 13 free throws [Monday]. It’s a thing to kind of concentrate on him, but still got to do things that we do well, too, and play at our pace and play good defense, box out and rebound.”

The Indians, now 1-8 overall and 0-4 in the conference, travel to Morgan to take on Cedar Mountain on Thursday night in conference action.

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