Royals Battle in Wyoming

The road trip proved to be challenging for Lake Region State as they would drop both games.

In the first matchup against Western Wyoming CC, the Royals looked like they left the offense back in North Dakota. They struggled to connect from anywhere on the floor shooting 39% from the field and 15% from 3. Freshman Denver Lund was a bright spot going 6-7 from the field scoring 12 points in 23 minutes, he would chip in 3 rebounds and 2 blocked shots. Freshman Noah Bonick would score 11 points on 5-11 shooting, adding 4 rebounds and 1 assist to the mix. Sophomore Ja’Vion Byers would lead the Royals in scoring with 14 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist and 2 steals. The final score was Western Wyoming 69 LRSC 53.

On the next night, the LRSC would take on the host team Casper CC. The Thunderbirds would jump out to an 11-0 start on the Royals with an early barrage of shots from behind the arc. Lake Region would settle in eventually and crawl their way back into it after being down 37-27 at the half. Multiple times in the second half they would cut the deficit to five but could never get it any closer. LRSC would fall 79-72 to Casper. Ja’Vion Byers would lead the Royals with 18 points. Denver Lund would have another efficient night scoring 16 points on 7-10 shooting. Harrison Raynor would provide a spark off the bench hitting three 3’s on his way to 10 points.

Head Coach Jared Marshall had this to say after the weekend, “I thought we played better. I thought our defense was better. It is an area we need to improve on. We led the Conference the last two years in that category and haven’t been as defensively sound as I would have liked early on this year. We are still right there in every game, obviously Western pulled away on us but Casper we were in it. We just aren’t a closing team right now and we need to get better at that. The last area I would like to see us improve on is our consistency. Night in and night out we don’t bring it for 40 minutes. That needs to change.”

Hopefully, Coach Marshall and the rest of the Royals will notice that change when they play a pair of home games this week. First up is Wednesday night vs. Rainy River that game will be 830pm at the sportscenter. The next will be versus the University of Jamestown JV. That game will be played as an exhibition for the Royals, tip off 3pm on Sunday.