WAUSA — The Wausa Vikings boys basketball team had quite the showing during the 2024 Lewis and Clark Conference Basketball Tournament last week, which might be a harbinger for what’s to come in the next few weeks at playoff time.
Head coach Tim Schindler’s squad finished fifth in its bracket of the conference tournament, winning one of three games.
One of Wausa’s losses was a 44-42 defeat to the top-seeded Walthill Blujays on Jan. 29.
The Vikings beat the Laurel-Concord- Coleridge Bears 42-36 on Feb. 1 and fell to the Bloomfield Bees 49-37 on Feb. 3. “The guys played really hard and we have two weeks to be playing our best ball going into subdistricts,” Schindler said. “We will be the two- or three-seed and play Bloomfield for the fourth time this year. I love my group and I know they will be ready to compete for the stretch run.” Against Walthill, Wausa (8-8) was led by senior Cashe Carlson (16 points), freshman Matthew Schindler (nine points) and junior Brady Bloomquist (six points).
In beating LCC, the Vikings used a key fourth-quarter 11-6 run to hold off the Bears. Sophomore Preston Schlote (14 points), Matthew Schindler (10 points) and freshman Mac Carlson (six points) led Wausa to the win. Bloomfield used a big second half to escape the Vikings, who led 21-17 at halftime. Bloomquist (nine points), Matthew Schindler (seven points) and junior Colton Baue (seven points) spearheaded Wausa’s efforts.
Bloomquist believed this performance was one that could give the Vikings the idea they might be heading in the right direction.
“We’ve come along as a team and we’ve been a lot better throughout these last couple of weeks,” Bloomquist said. “We’ve gotten a lot more confidence lately. We had a lot of snow days and were unsure of what would ever happen. But we’re just playing better offensively, and the shots are falling now and better than they were early in the year. We’re still playing defense like we did at the beginning of the year. We just need to keep playing offense as a team, and that’s what’s been working for us. Our whole team is pretty talented and it just all started working. We’re more confident seeing the ball going through the hoop.”
Bloomquist is optimistic of a potential playoff surprise.
“I’ve been feeling a lot better lately,” Bloomquist said. “After this week, I think we’ve proven a lot. We had a bad game against Bloomfield, but we know we can beat them because we did earlier on this year. We’ve proven that we can play good with anyone that we play against.”
