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In the second half of the county doubleheader on Thursday, January 21, the Wildcats evened the score on the night with a blowout win over North Branch. Earlier in the night, North Branch’s girls team had won big over Chisago Lakes.

The Vikings already knew they were up against it, and then the game started with a 16-0 run from the Wildcats and the Vikings never could recover.

The Wildcats’ size gave North Branch absolute fits all night. They couldn’t guard CL’s posts but couldn’t find their way through the tall trees on CL’s defense too.

The Wildcats had a 20 point lead at halftime at 39-19. The lead kept ballooning throughout the second half until it got to running time and CL wrapped up the 74-33 victory.

The ‘Cats used a very balanced approach to scoring. Despite the big win, they only had two players in double figures. Carter Duncan led the way with 16 points and Thomas Gillach had 13. Ethan Hickcox and Trevin Nelson each added nine points and nine other players scored as the whole CL bench got in on the action.

For North Branch, Nick Kress was their top scorer with 14 points, but after him, nobody scored more than four points.

The ‘Cats will take on Buffalo at Buffalo on Friday, January 29 before hosting the Duluth Denfeld Hunters on Tuesday, February 2.

The win moved Chisago Lakes to 12-6 on the year and 4-0 in the section, leaving them in the drivers seat for the top spot in the section.

North Branch’s loss dropped them to 4-13 on the year and still looking for their first section and conference win.

The two teams will square off again on Tuesday, February 9 and if the sections stay similar to what they are now, they may play in a loser-goes-home game in the section playoffs.

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