Boys Basketball: Cass Lake-Bena hands Nevis first loss in conference

NEVIS – Cass Lake-Bena could prevent the Nevis boys basketball team from winning the Northland Conference title outright for the fifth year in a row.

Nevis defeated CL-B 65-58 earlier this season to win the first game of this annual series for the fifth straight season. However, the Panthers continued their trend of winning the second game to earn the series split with a 98-83 victory at the Tiger Arena on Feb. 17.

Both teams could once again tie for the conference title after sharing 13-1, 12-1, 12-1 and 11-3 records the last four seasons. The loss dropped Nevis to 10-1 in the conference with three games against Northland opponents left while CL-B improved to 11-1 with two conference games remaining.

JohnPaul Benson (19), Devan Lindow (18), Austin Ahrendt (14) and Joe Houchin (12) led a balanced scoring attack for the Tigers, who trailed 55-35 at the half. Alex Lester had 10 rebounds, Lindow grabbed seven rebounds and had seven assists, and Benson had four steals. Ahrendt had three rebounds while Lester and Benson had two assists each as Nevis fell to 16-6 overall.

CL-B, which was rated No. 2 in the latest state Class A poll, improved to 23-1.

“Cass Lake showed why they are one of the best teams in Class A this year. I didn’t think that we played very well defensively, but you have to give Cass Lake credit for hitting eight 3s in the first half with six different guys making at least one,” said Nevis head coach Scott Kramer. “I was really impressed with how we started the second half. We were down 20, but started the half with a 19-3 run to cut the score to 58-54. But that’s as close as we would get as we went all in to make that run, but then kind of ran out of gas as we were forced to play a faster pace due to the deficit.”