What a week this is for the Jackson County Central boys basketball program.
Just having the opportunity to have three home games in five days is special. That’s something that doesn’t come along very often.
And when you consider the quality of the three opponents the Huskies will be facing, the gym should be rocking all week.
“We have a big week coming up. Windom can light it up. Redwood can light it up and then we have Waseca,” JCC coach Alex Hein said Friday after an 84-69 home win over Belle Plaine. That win avenged one of the losses this season for the 17-2 Huskies.
Windom is the first team to come in. The Eagles visit for a 6 p.m. game on Tuesday. That’s the front end of boy-girl doubleheader.
Redwood Valley is the opponent at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Waseca is in town for a 1:30 p.m. Saturday matinee.
With those three marquee matchups on the docket Tuesday, Friday and Saturday are the focus for most folks, Hein is in full coach mode as he looks forward to Monday, Wednesday and Thursday when the team will practice.
“We have three practices,” Hein commented. “The coaches are always excited about the practices. The guys are excited about the games but I’m excited to get into the gym and work on some stuff and have a really big week. I might not sleep much. I’m excited and I’m excited for the team.”
A 17-2 record is outstanding. It’s even more remarkable when you consider that the Huskies have operated with only 60 percent of their starting lineup.
Juniors Ben Gallagher and Roman Voss were both injured in the state football quarterfinals in November.
Gallagher made his first appearance of the basketball season Friday and scored 12 points including three baskets from three-point range in limited playing time. Voss will follow this week.
As you would expect, Gallagher had a huge smile on his face after Friday’s win.
“It feels great,” he said. “I’ve been practicing for a while. It feels great to finally be back after two months of doing nothing.”
Gallagher couldn’t have been happier with his first game back. He was tired but he knows the conditioning will return.
“For the first game back, I couldn’t ask for anything more,” he said/ “I’m still gassed. My legs were getting tired. Every time I’d make a move it feels like I can’t by my guy even though I know I can. Other than that it was pretty good for the first game. I know it’s going to be good in a week or so.
“We’re going to look pretty good. We’re going to have everyone healthy. It looks like a scary state team again. It’s going to be fun to have everyone back.”
Hein is very happy with where his team is at as it heads into the final month of the regular season and welcomes the reinforcements the Huskies have coming their way.
“We’ve been playing really well,” he commented. “And you saw that the guys that were playing well before (Friday) continued to play well. It’s nice to have a point guard. Ben was able to get to the rim and shoot some threes and he’s a hard defender. He’s a big addition, especially going down the stretch here and then we’ll get Roman back.
“To have a team as good as we have and then to add two pieces is really exciting. We have to gel a little bit. We have some things to work on but we’re excited.”
Considering how well things have been going this season, is Hein concerned about a change in team chemistry?
Not a chance.
“We have some things to clean up,” Hein said. “We changed some things from last year. They haven’t had a lot of reps so we need those game reps. I’d much rather do it now than in the playoffs. We have a chance to clean some stuff up and make it a little better.”
High-scoring foes
Each of the teams coming to Jackon this week rank in the top 10 in points per game among the state’s 123 Class 2A boys basketball teams.
Windom is second at 84.6 points, Waseca fifth (81.1) and Redwood Valley ninth (78.0).
JCC is averaging 73.1 points per game.
Big South Conference East Pod and Section 3AA South Sub-Section rival Fairmont can take a bow in keeping JCC off that list. The Huskies have scored 87 points total in splitting the regular-season series with the Cardinals.
Here’s the top 10 list:
Class 2A boys points scored
Mora 85.4
Windom 84.6
Warroad 83.0
Legacy Christian 81.9
Waseca 81.1
Glencoe-Silver Lake 81.0
Blake 79.3
Caledonia 79.2
Redwood Valley 78.0
Jordan 76.8
Etc.
Windom hit the century mark in back-to-back games in a pair of recent games, beating Redwood Valley 100-97 and Mountain Lake Area/Comfrey 108-66.
In that Windom-Redwood game, Lukas Means scored 54 points for the Cardinals. Means also scored 54 points in an 85-80 loss to Luverne to become only the fifth player in state history to score 50-plus points in back-to-back games.
Waseca is 20-0 and is one of only two unbeaten teams in Class 2A. The Bluejays play Martin Luther/Granada-Huntley-East Chain/Truman (8-10) Thursday in Truman before coming to Jackson on Saturday.
Albany (17-0) is the other unbeaten team.
If you don’t think the Waseca game is big, you can take it from Rudy Voss:
Rudy is JCC’s all-time leader in games played, points, three-pointers and assists. Then again, he’s only second in steals and fifth in rebounds so really, was he really all that good?