Knights battle, but Sabers too tough

The Oak Creek boys basketball team had its rivals from Franklin right where it wanted them at the half on Dec.13.

Stuck in a low-scoring game (the Knights were ahead 19-18) and with the tempo fully in their favor.

But then the shots stopped falling for Oak Creek, and the Sabers were able to stretch things out and earn a 49-35 Southeast Conference victory.

"We played very good defense and really frustrated their big guys," said Oak Creek coach Mike Jossie. "But in the second half, we went ice cold. We shot something like 10 or 12 percent from the field. That's going to occasionally happen when you shoot a lot of threes like we do.

"In the end, they wore us down with their size."

Oak Creek fell to 0-2 in the Southeast and 0-4 overall while the Sabers continued their good early run in conference play, improving to 3-0 in league play and 3-2 overall.

"I think our overall effort really improved in the second half," said Franklin coach Tim Hogan. "They had been really outhustling us and beating us to every loose ball in the first half, and we only had one offensive rebound in the first half, too.

"They even hit a putback at the buzzer to put themselves ahead."

So the Sabers started mixing up their defenses a little more and as a result, Franklin outscored the Knights, 12-6, in the third quarter and took the lead for good at 30-25.

"We just came out with more intensity," Hogan said, "and I was proud of that. We also went inside and got to the foul line. We just became more aggressive."

Franklin pulled away with a 19-10 effort in the fourth quarter as the Sabers dominated the foul line, hitting 17 of 27 attempts while the Knights were only seven of nine.

"We're just extremely small (no one taller than 6-3) and we have four sophomores on the roster," said Jossie. "I liked our game plan, and we were able to compete against a team as big as Franklin for quite some time. But we have four sophomores on the varsity and that sometimes makes it hard to stay with the more experienced squads."

Brett Ksobiech had 18 points while Chad Kanugh had eight for Franklin. Hogan sung the praises of Danny Kingstad for his all-around floor game, including eight points, five rebounds and four blocked shots.

Terrence Garner had 11 points while Jonathan Breen had eight for Oak Creek.

Hogan felt good about this win.

"Mike (Jossie) always has guys ready to play," Hogan said, "and sometimes it's just not fun playing down at Oak Creek.

"It's always tough. This was a good road test for us against a crosstown rival.

"The guys got the message at the half. Oak Creek wasn't going to go away so we really had to put in a good team effort."