The whistle blew loudly, signaling the beginning of the game. Senior David Salach won the tip-off, passing it to senior Clayton Custer, who drove the ball all the way to the basket and scored a layup. This opening play set the tone for the game against BVHS and proved, as the shirts worn by the crowd said, the BVNW boy’s basketball team is back.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve played a home game, it seemed like, and we were all excited for that,” head coach Ed Fritz said.

There was an added incentive to win the game as the Huskies were playing against Dwight Williams, who was an assistant coach for the team last year but took the job as BVHS’s head basketball coach. According to Fritz, it was an honor to play against him.

The first quarter remained relatively close between the Huskies and the Tigers, but BVNW managed to keep ahead and finished the first eight minutes with a score of 16-13. According to Fritz and senior Ben Richardson, the first quarter was slow, but it got quicker as the game went on.

In the second quarter, BVNW widened the score gap considerably, and BVHS only scored four points. The second quarter ended with a score of BVNW 41 to BVHS 17.

“Turnovers were huge for us, they led to a lot of baskets [for us],” Richardson said.

Coming out of halftime, BVHS attempted to catch up by lengthening their score to 26 points, but the Huskies kept up with their pace and continued to shoot the ball well. BVNW led going into the final quarter, 58-26.

“The plan was to speed them up and try to make shots for each other off of turnovers,” Richardson said.

The Huskies finished finished the game how they started it, in the lead. The final score was 71-42, and the team improves their record to 2-1.

According to Fritz, the team gave up many easy drives to the basket, over rotated a lot and did not rebound as well as they would have liked, but believes that the game will help them in their game tonight at 6:00 p.m. against Lee Summit West at Avila University.

Both Richardson and Fritz believe that the crowd helped the team succeed on the court.

“Our crowd is always great,” Fritz said. “It was very humbling…I’m really happy to be at this school.”

Fritz said that the plan for tonight was to win and develop more depth on the team.

“We’re just trying to be in a position to improve after each time we play, so hopefully we can carry this over to [tonight],” Fritz said.