HOISINGTON — The Hoisington High School boys’ basketball team opened its postseason run with a 59-28 rout of Russell on Monday.
The one-two combination of 6-foot-5 senior forward Derrick Kaiser and 6-8 junior center Cody Stetler that bolstered Hoisington to a double-figure halftime lead in the Class 3A sub-state tournament first round game.
“He shot the ball well tonight,” Haxton said. “We need him to shoot the ball well. When we have that balanced attack of somebody shooting the ball well and have that inside presence, we’re going to be pretty tough to contend with. Hopefully, we can have that duo, and have some other guys step up and do a little more scoring
than what we had tonight.”
Up 15-10 after one quarter, the Cardinals went on a 20-6 run that lasted all eight minutes of the second quarter, leading them to a 35-16 advantage at halftime.
“I wasn’t real pleased with how we played tonight,” Haxton said. “We didn’t come out real focused. We let them hang around for most of the first quarter, and after that, we picked it up a little bit. We didn’t play as physically tough as I expected us to play tonight. That’s just something that we’ll need to work on over the next couple of days.”
Hoisington forced more than 20 turnovers in the first half. Trent Schremmer led the Cardinals with four steals.
“They’ve got one really good player in (Jordan) Hecker, and after that, their ball-handling is susceptible,” Haxton said. “We knew that. We saw that on film. We threw a lot of different presses at them, and we’re long and athletic, and came up with some steals. We got our hands on a lot of balls.”
Kaiser got the run started with two points, finishing with 15 in the first half, including 10 in the second quarter.
Kaiser finished the Cardinals with a game-high 24 points while grabbing five rebounds and having two steals.
Stetler finished the first half with eight points, scoring a pair of free throws and a putback during the second-quarter run.
Stetler scored 13 points and brought in seven rebounds, including four offensive rebounds.
“He was strong inside, but there were a lot of times where he had balls batted away from him tonight,” Haxton saqid. “He’s going to have to work on that, and he knows that. He fully owns up to that, and he’ll play physically tougher on Thursday night.”
Up by 14 points with four minutes remaining, Haxton pulled four of the starters, allowing his bench to add six points in the second quarter.
The Cardinals bench finished with 14 points.
“The bench got a lot of good minutes tonight,” Haxton said. “We played 12 deep, and I liked the way they played. They didn’t turn the ball over. They worked it on the offensive end and worked really hard on the full-court press and also on the half-court defense.”
Hecker led Russell with 10 points, scoring a pair of 3-pointers in the first half.

HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL
Class 3A sub-state tournament

At Hoisington

BOYS

Monday

Hoisington 59, Russell 28
RUSSELL (1-20)
     Craig Farmer 0 4-5 4, Jordan Hecker 4 0-0 10, Joel Boden 0 0-0 0, Devin Hoch 1 0-0 3, Tucker Kaufman 0 0-1 0, Brennan Walter 2 0-0 4, Eric Rourke 0 0-1 0, Tyler Hontz 2 1-2 6, Spencer Towery 0 1-2 1. Totals 9 6-11 28.
HOISINGTON (17-4)
     Trent Schremmer 1 0-0 2, Jacob Durrett 0 0-0 0, Cody Stetler 5 3-6 13, Ryan Becker 0 0-0 0, Brooks Linsner 2 1-2 5, Darin Poland 1 1-5 3, Jeffrey Kaiser 0 2-2 2, Anthony Broeder 2 2-2 6, Taylor Crawford 0 0-2 0, Cody Richter 1 0-0 2, Derrick Kaiser 10 2-4 24, Zach Gaddis 1 0-1 2. Totals 23 11-24 59.
Russell                   10    6   7    5   —  28
Hoisington             15   20  13  11  —  59    

     Three-point goals — Russell 4 (Hecker 2, Hoch, Hontz); Hoisington 2 (D. Kaiser 2).