After being outrebounded by East Kentwood on Friday night by allowing 15 on the Falcon offensive end, the Rangers knew that they would need to step up in order to avoid back-to-back losses. The Rangers did just that, as they outrebounded the Traverse City Central Trojans by 5 to help earn their first victory of the season, 52-38. Senior Tate Hallock corralled 10 rebounds to help lead the charge.

“We’ve struggled to rebound the ball so far [this season] and I thought we did a great job of that tonight,” said head coach Kyle Carhart while soaking wet from the celebration of his first win as FHC head coach. “It seemed like Tate grabbed every rebound, he was outstanding tonight. We’ve been telling Daniel [Deindorfer] he needs to get more aggressive with his box outs and he did a great job [boxing out] tonight even while battling foul trouble.”

Junior Mitch Wilkinson started the game hot, scoring 6 of his 12 points in the first quarter, and the Rangers led 11-10 after the opening period. The second quarter was a dominant defensive performance by the Rangers, as they stifled the Trojan offense and forced them to take incredibly difficult shots. The Trojans were held to just 4 points the entire quarter, 2 of them coming from the free throw line. With the Rangers leading 20-14 at the half, FHC had allowed more points in the first quarter Friday versus East Kentwood (16) than they did the entire first half on Saturday night.

“We didn’t play very well defensively versus Kentwood and we were really upset about that,” Tate said. “To be able to hold a team (Traverse City Central) that is that talented offensively to 38 points is awesome. We communicated a lot better defensively and that was big for us.”

Tate scored all 6 of his points in the third quarter and junior Jimmy Scholler had 4 of his 7 assists in the quarter to push the lead to 34-25 after three quarters of play. After the Rangers pushed the lead to 40-27 early in the fourth, the Trojans came roaring back with an 8-0 run to cut the Rangers’ lead to 40-35, which was the closest the game had been since it was 17-12 halfway through the second quarter.

With just under four minutes remaining, senior Jake Ball drove into the lane, drew a second defender as he got past his man, and kicked it to a wide open senior Josh Wise who hit a dagger of a three-pointer to bring the Trojan scoring run to a screeching halt. From there, the Rangers outscored the Trojans 15-3 over the final three and a half minutes to secure the victory.

“It was great to get that win,” said Jimmy, who led all scorers with 14 points. “Coming right off a tough loss and being able to respond this way was awesome. This was one of our three losses last year, so beating them this year is definitely a great feeling.”

Being able to bounce back after a tough loss on Friday night to beat a good Traverse City Central team shows a lot of character from this team.

“I was worried about this game ever since I saw the schedule for this season,” Carhart said. “I worried the entire three-hour trip up here. I’m very proud of the way my guys played and I think it showed the kind of senior leadership we have.”