Knights flying high
Team rebounds from Friday loss
Oak Creek’s Blake Mierow sails over teammate Joey Zietlow as he tries to save a loose ball Tuesday night against Racine Case. Oak Creek won, 59-50.
Oak Creek — Maybe Oak Creek got the wakeup call it needed.
The Knights boys basketball team won seven of its first eight games and was undefeated in the Southeast Conference, but behind the scenes, the practices weren’t at the level coach Mike Jossie wanted. That lack of sharpness came back to haunt the team last Friday when it suffered its first league loss.
Tuesday was a different story.
Oak Creek bounced back with a 59-50 victory over Racine Case in a matchup of conference co-leaders as senior guard Joey Zietlow scored a season-high 19 points and the Knights outscored the Eagles, 12-6, in the final 51⁄2 minutes. Senior forward Drew Yetka, who averages a team-best 21.4 points per game, battled foul trouble in both halves but finished with 18.
Case senior Koreem Ozier, who had 50 points in a victory at Kenosha Tremper, had 30. The Eagles, ranked 10th in the area by the Journal Sentinel, dropped to 5-3 overall and 3-2 in the SEC.
“We had two good practices. Finally,” Jossie said. “We knew last Friday was coming and building just because we weren’t having the practices that we were capable of having. As I tell them, you play like you practice and we had two really solid practices (coming into this game). They were locked in. Focused.”
Two stretches were key for Oak Creek, which lost, 50-48, to Racine Horlick on Friday.
The first came with 12 minutes 41 seconds left in the first half when Yetka went to the bench with his second foul. The team didn’t miss a beat without the 6-foot-6 forward, however, building its lead to as many as 10 points before taking a 34-26 lead into the half.
The Knights played so well without Yetka that Jossie didn’t need to bring him back until the start of the second half.
Zietlow, a 6-2 point guard, had nine of his 12 first-half points after Yetka left the game. The squad also got a threepointer each from senior Jakup Sinani and senior Matt Kasar and two buckets from junior guard Shamari Easley.
In Jossie’s opinion, the half and the game were especially key for Zietlow, whom he challenged last week to raise his level of play.
“I took it to heart because this year I started a little slow, but whether it’s Coach or my teammates, if I play bad one half they’ll say this is your half, just constantly telling me to keep looking for my shot,” he said. “Whether it’s Coach or my teammates, it helps a lot.”
It was Zietlow’s three that started the game’s deciding run after Case, which trailed by as many as 13 early in the second half, trimmed the lead to 47-44 with 6:22 to play.
Over the next 21⁄2 minutes, Oak Creek got baskets from Sinani, Easley and senior forward Bobby Smith to take a 56-46 lead with 2:42 to play.