Lamb leads Wolverines to district finals

GUTHRIE CENTER — Tuesday night was the Jackson Lamb show.

Lamb carried Nodaway Valley early, until the Wolverines eventually pulled away to a 56-40 win over Griswold here in a Class 1A District 13 semifinal.

The win improved the Wolverines to 17-6 for the season and creates a District 13 final Thursday in Panora against top-seeded Paton-Churdan, which won 75-45 Tuesday over Adair-Casey.

Lamb put the team on his back, scoring 11 of the team’s 14 first-quarter points and 21 of the team’s 29 first-half points. He finished the game with 32 points.

He did it all — scoring on drives to the basket, off offensive rebounds, on floaters in the lane, spinning through the lane, popping 3-pointers and from the free throw line.

“Everybody did their job tonight, I thought,” Nodaway Valley head coach Darrell Burmeister said. “Jackson carried us there for awhile tonight.”

The Wolverines built a 27-17 lead in the first half after Lamb knocked down his second 3-pointer of the half, but Griswold ended the half with three 3-pointers of its own, trimming the lead at the break to 29-26.

The Tigers started the second by taking their first lead at 30-29 since it was 9-7 in the first quarter.

But Nodaway Valley responded with a 16-5 run from the midway point of the third quarter through the midway point of the fourth quarter.

Tanner Armstrong had two offensive rebounds for putbacks, while Nathan Andrews added one of his own and Lamb was fouled in the act of shooting a 3-pointer during the run. He sank all three free throws.

“We play hard and we’ve got a pretty good player in Jackson Lamb there,” Burmeister said. “The other guys play well around him. I think that’s key. Tanner had eight points, Nathan Andrews had six, David Schweitzer seven and Nate Venteicher three. All those points were really big tonight, came at really important times in the game.”

Nodaway Valley dared Griswold to shoot the 3-pointer over the top of its 1-2-2 matchup zone. Once the Tigers hit their three 3-pointers to end the first half and a fourth midway through the third quarter, Burmeister switched back to his 1-1-3 matchup zone.

“Our defense was pretty steady throughout the night,” Burmeister said. “We showed a little bit different defense tonight. We put Jackson at the top, almost looked like a triangle-and-two, but we called it our 1-2-2 matchup tonight.”

Burmeister hoped to take away Griswold’s high-low game by playing the 1-2-2 matchup zone. The Tigers were constantly flashing players from the wing into the high post.

Rebounding and free throw shooting were two of the keys to victory, Burmeister said.

The Wolverines shot 16-of-20 from the free throw line for 80 percent, while Griswold shot just 4-7 from the charity stripe.

“We didn’t maybe shoot a lot of free throws in that fourth quarter,” Burmeister said. “We were 5-6 in that fourth quarter, so all those count. We wanted to get to the line more than they and we were 16-20 tonight. That’s 80 percent. That’s our highest of the year.”

Nodaway Valley now turns its attention to Thursday’s matchup with Paton-Churdan (20-3).

The Rockets feature two players averaging more than 18.0 points per game in guard Jake Carey (18.7) and post player Noah Juergensen (18.5).

“We know we have to stop the big guy inside and they had a hot shooter tonight,” Burmeister said. “One of their 3-point shooters got hot tonight. I’m not for sure what’s going to happen (Thursday), but our fan base is awesome and it will be a loud gym up there at Panorama. We’ve played up there once already this year, so that should help us out some.”

GRISWOLD (40) — Drake Rieber 5 0-1 12, Mason Boucher 3 3-5 9, Walker Mundorf 3 1-1 7, Aaron Metheny 2 0-0 6, Caleb Schaaf 2 0-0 4, Jordan Vetter 1 0-0 2. Totals — 16 4-7 40. 3-point goals — 4 (Metheny 2, Rieber 2). Team fouls — 17. Fouled out — Metheny, Vetter.

NODAWAY VALLEY (56) — Jackson Lamb 10 9-11 32, Tanner Armstrong 4 0-0 8, David Schweitzer 1 4-4 7, Nathan Andrews 2 2-2 6, Nate Venteicher 1 1-2 3. Totals — 18 16-20 56. 3-point goals — 4 (Lamb 3, Schweitzer 1). Team fouls — 9. Fouled out — none.

Griswold — 11 26 37 40

NV — 14 29 44 56