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Cooper 80, North Branch 46

The deck was stacked against the North Branch boys basketball team from the beginning of their game against the Robbinsdale Cooper Hawks.

Cooper was opening the season with all five starters from last year's exceptional squad, including one of Minnesota's top players, Rodney Williams.

North Branch, on the other hand, was still working out the kinks from losing a good chunk of the starting lineup and having just scrapedby Duluth Central to open up the season.

The game couldn't have opened in worse fashion for the Vikings. Within 20 seconds of the opening tip-off, Williams skied above the North Branch defenders, only one of which can claim to be within even four inches of Williams' six-foot, six-inch frame, and threw down an emphatic alley-oop.

Regardless of Williams' athleticism, the Vikings did hang tough as junior guard Kyle Grote sandwiched two three pointers around a Kosta Moore lay up.

At the halfway mark of the first half, the Vikings were going punch-for-punch with the Hawks, trailing by only five at 21-16. Then, according to Head Coach Bill Baumann, Cooper's athleticism simply overpowered the under-sized Vikings. "Cooper has a fantastic group of athletes with one of the most elite basketball players in the state," he said. "We competed hard early, but then their athleticism just took over."

Before the Vikings could escape for halftime, the Hawks had built a comfortable 25 point lead, which included a 17-1 run after North Branch had pulled it within five.

The Vikings never threatened Cooper in the second half, either.

Grote ended up as the top scorer for the Vikings, sinking 17 points on six-of-11 shooting, including five-of-eight from the three point line. Moore added 12 points, and senior Ryan Norman had six points, three rebounds and three assists.

A quick glance at Cooper's lineup reveals the benefit of having four players over the six-foot, four-inch threshold, while North Branch had only one.

"Against a team like Cooper, you can't make any mistakes and we have to stay within the game plan," Baumann said. "We are really young and inexperienced and it will take the kids awhile to adjust. This is a whole new level for them, and I think they are learning what it will take to compete at this level."

St. Louis Park 55, North Branch 45

A slow start can bury even the best of teams, and North Branch never recovered from their slow-as-molasses beginning against the St. Louis Park Orioles.

Early daggers from beyond the three-point line pierced the North Branch defense too many times, as the Orioles raced out to a 17-4 lead in the first four minutes. "We had really worked hard on the Cooper game plan and we needed to play a different style against St. Louis Park," Baumann said. "The only problem was we didn't adjust at first and it hurt us."

Baumann explained that against Cooper, the Vikings tried to keep the Hawks out on the perimeter and out of the lane and off the boards, but against the Orioles, they needed to pressure them outside and take the three point line away.

The Vikings were relegated to playing from behind for the rest of the game, and it just doesn't fit their style of play. They knocked the lead down to eight on a few occasions, but they never got closer than that. "They reminded me of some of the early North Branch teams we had at the beginning of the decade," Baumann said. "But, the difference was that our teams would attack if you took away the three point line. Park really didn't attack the inside and once we adjusted and took away the three pointer, we were able to make a run. After we cut the lead to eight two different times, we had opportunities to make a good run each time, but both times we had the ball four possessions and didn't score."

The lack of scoring consistency returned to haunt the Vikings in the 10-point loss.

Moore led the way with 15 points and Mike Dahl was the only other Viking in double figures, scoring 11 points. Grote had nine points in the losing effort. Sean Franks, however, did provide a good spark off the bench with two points, five rebounds and three assists.

"We are still trying to find combinations so it may take a while to find our best lineups. Right now we are struggling on the offensive end. It's not that we aren't getting good shots, it's just that we are not putting the ball in the basket," Baumann said. "We are making progress on the defensive end. I have to continually remind the kids that the season is a marathon and not a sprint. The tough part is we play in a tough conference and we have 20 conference games so we don't have the advantage of playing a non-conference schedule to find these things out, so we will have to have on-the-job training."

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