Shooting woes hurt Wildcats in loss to Eudora

Louisburg senior Kohl Vogel goes up to try and block a Eudora shot Friday at Eudora High School. The Wildcats fell to the Cardinals, 59-31.

EUDORA – After one quarter, the
Louisburg boys basketball team was right there with Eudora, the No. 6-ranked
team in Class 4A.

It was the second quarter where the Wildcats weren’t able recover.

In its first action following the holiday break, Louisburg had its worst shooting night of the season in a 59-31 loss to the Cardinals at Eudora High School. The Cardinals were part of the reason for that as they forced 15 Wildcat turnovers and scored 17 points off those mistakes.

“It was obviously wasn’t one of
our better shootings nights, and it wasn’t necessarily shooting, but more
execution offensively,” Louisburg coach Ty Pfannenstiel said. “We were really
poor in the second quarter with our execution and Eudora was really hot there
for a while and they are a really good team and well-coached.

“They played as well as I have
seen them play this year. That will happen sometimes when you have an off night
and the other team is on fire and that is what the score was as lopsided as it
was.”

The two teams were on the opposite sides of the shooting spectrums as Louisburg shot just 28 percent for the game, while Eudora connected on 56 percent of its shots. The Cardinals also combined for 41 points in the second and third quarters to pull away.

“Eudora shot it well and even
their coach told me after it was over that they hadn’t even shot that well in
an open gym before, much less a game,” Pfannenstiel said. “We just have to
shoot the ball better and that was an emphasis over the summer. So far we have
done a lot better with that, but we just have to bounce back.”

Senior Kohl Vogel led the Wildcat
offense with eight points on the night and fellow senior Dylan DeShazer
finished with six. Junior Madden Rutherford had five rebounds to lead the
Wildcats.

Louisburg will try and get back on
track Tuesday when it travels to Bonner Springs, which is ranked No. 10 in
Class 5A. The Wildcats will live on the road the next couple of weeks as they
won’t have a home game until Jan. 25.

“We have some difficult games
coming up so we can’t feel sorry for ourselves after this,” Pfannenstiel said. “We
have a very good Bonner Springs team on Tuesday and we have to come back and
get ready to go.”

LOU               10           4             11           6 – 31

EUD               13           18           23           5 – 59

LOUISBURG (4-3): Kohl Vogel 4-8
0-1 8; Dylan DeShazer 0-4 6-7 6; Brayden Gage 2-6 1-2 5; Weston Guetterman 1-7
0-0 3; Madden Rutherford 1-4 0-0 3; Garrett Rolofson 1-2 0-0 2; Noah Hill 1-2
0-0 2; Ben Guetterman 1-3 0-1 2. Totals: 11-39 7-11 31. 3-point field goals: 2,
(Rutherford, W. Guetterman)