HOPE — A Hauser boys basketball team that had been without its head coach the past two weeks couldn’t find its rhythm against Jac-Cen-Del Friday night.
The result was an 81-29 victory for the Eagles, spolining the Jets’ senior night.
Hauser had not played in two weeks while coach Brent Keck was in quarantine for contact tracing. Friday was Keck’s first day back.
“We didn’t get a lot of things done that we wanted to have happen, but in fairness to the kids, it’s nobody’s fault,” Keck said. “We didn’t get a ton of reps in practice. The coaches did a nice job of trying to get our kids ready and all those things. We had been really banged up with injuries the week prior to that, so we did a lot of skill development and skeleton offense, and then we had a couple weather issues.”
Jac-Cen-Del (13-6) made seven of its first eight shots from the field and scored the game’s first 17 points. The Eagles led 27-8 after one quarter, then outscored the Jets (8-10) 24-0 in the second period to take a 51-8 halftime lead.
Caleb Simon led Jac-Cen-Del with 23 points. Cameron Gehl added 15.
“They’re an outstanding team, and they played incredibly well,” Keck said. “They did an outstanding job. They shot the ball really well. They have five guys that can make shots, and they’re going to be a tough out in the tournament with their skill set and some of the things that they do.”
Koby Johnson scored 11 points to lead Hauser. Clayton West added seven points and seven rebounds.
“I missed seeing them this week,” Keck said. “I wish I could have been more of a help to them. But not being around for two weeks, and playing against a team they way they played, that made things awful tough tonight.”
The Jets are scheduled to play a makeup game against Southwestern (Shelby) on Monday, but that game is in jeopardy because of an impending snowstorm.
“We’re going to come back in (today) and try to get things cleaned up,” Keck said. “We have a game on Monday. We’ll try to be as prepared as we possibly can. We’re going to keep trying to grind away and learn from it and try to get ready for Monday.”
