Tuesday night brought an interesting test for the Badger basketball team, as they had to play Thorndale -- a 2A team ranked in the top 10 in the state -- without Beau Patterson, one of their best players.
Lampasas trailed for large portions of the game, but through a great fourth quarter where the Badgers outscored the Bulldogs 15-5, the home team went on to win 5144.
With the absence of Patterson who has been the Badgers’ leading scorer this season, other players were going to need to step up and score some points. Aidan Nuckles did just that. He led the way with 14 points.
Peyton Sisson also found his way to double figures as he scored 10 points. Tripp Stinnett added seven, and Dylan Polmanteer scored six points. Calum Mitchell, Bryson Roberts and Jax Pratus each contributed four, and Sam Williams recorded two points.
Mitchell is the most obvious replacement for Patterson when it comes to physicality inside and rebounding. He said after the game that the team knew Thorndale would present a challenge, but they were up for it and did what needed to be done for the win.
“I feel like the game plan was that we had to play faster,” Mitchell said. “And we talk about this thing called carrying your water. You have to be able to carry other people’s water when other people go out. So Beau is a very key player for us … we have to have other guys step up and take places of them. We had to play faster and a lot more physical.”
The players and head coach Aaron Nuckles said after the game that the amount of basketball the Badgers have played over the past few days has left them tired and made things difficult Tuesday night.
The Badgers played six games at the Van Vleck tournament last weekend, had one day of practice on Monday and then played another game on Tuesday.
“Six games in three days made it challenging,” Aaron Nuckles said.
The coach added that while they planned to play faster because they didn’t have Patterson, he wasn’t sure how well his team could do.
“Two things made this challenging,” Nuckles said. “One, we didn’t have our big guy that’s a really good basketball player. And two, we are still feeling the effects from six games. But we battled through.”
The head coach also made sure to acknowledge the contributions of Stinnett and Roberts who got into the basketball season late after the end of football. He said without the effort of those two players on both ends of the floor Tuesday night, the Badgers wouldn’t have won the game.
Aidan Nuckles said that while there were challenges this week, the team will be better in the long run for having endured.
“You never know what can happen down the line, and I felt like we had a good practice yesterday,” the senior said. “We didn’t keep him [Patterson] in our starting group because we knew he wouldn’t be here, and we had lots of challenges, but we worked through it.”
Thorndale was a tough, slow-paced, grinding, physical basketball team. That adds another style the Badgers have played against early in this season and is a big reason why Nuckles made the non-district schedule the way he did. By the time the Badgers reach the end of district and hopefully are set up for playoff matchups, he wants his team to have seen as much different basketball as possible so they are ready for anything that may come their way.
That also explains why the Badgers have gone from playing on the coast in Van Vleck last weekend to competing in North Texas at the Childress tournament this weekend -- so they will get experience with different styles of basketball.
“This is going to be brute force, two rocks colliding, physical … probably not a lot of onball [defense],” Nuckles said of the Childress tournament. “We’ll see some zone stuff, but when you get to the rim you’re going to get hacked and you might not get the call. We’re going to need to bring this stuff to North Texas to be successful. We’ve got to go be us and make those people play our style.”
The Badgers played their first games of the tournament on Thursday against San Angelo Lake View and Idalou. They will continue the tournament today and Saturday. *** In the subvarsity games against Thorndale, both Lampasas teams got wins. The JV White won 47-17, and JV Blue prevailed 40-37.
In the JV White game, scoring came from Cam Olney and Kendyl Bennett with 10 points each, Ezekiel Hurd with nine points, and Randon Thorp and Jayson Rivera at five points each. Kingston Chambers added three points, and Oliver Martin, Isaiah Chestnut and Noah Helmbold scored two points each.
In the Blue victory, scoring was led by Nolan Lecker with 10 points. Xavier Martin recorded five points. Henry Shahan, Shane Carpenter, Colby Spoonts and Rylan Chapa all contributed four points apiece, while Kord Bumpus scored three points. Carson Toups and Colter Sellers added two points each.
Tripp Stinnett made an impact on both ends of the floor on Tuesday night.
