East Mills' scoring woes a big benefit for Bedford

It was a long night for the East Mills boys’ basketball team, as the Wolverines fell to the host Bedford 63-35.

All night, Bedford pressed East Mills defensively and never let the Wolverines come very close to leading the game.

“We probably got stuck with the one seed, even though they were the three seed,” head coach Kevin Schafer said. “We knew what we were up against with their pressure defense; we don’t see that kind of defense in our conference and we can’t come close to mimicking that in practice.”

Bedford was able to force eight steals throughout the night and got a good performance from senior Colt Scott, who went for 18 points on 6-12 shooting.

Juniors Max McMillin and Quentin Sefrit were the only other Bedford players with double-digit point totals. McMillin had 11 and Sefrit had 10. For East Mills, Weston Copperstone and Miguel Sanchez provided most of the offense. Copperstone had 10 points and Sanchez had eight.

“Once we got the ball past half court and started getting aggressive, we did much better,” Schafer said. “Early in the game we were passive ,and you can’t play passive against that kind of defense.”

Schafer said the strategy was the slow down the pace of the game, and he thought especially in the second half East Mills did that well.

“I thought we got (the pace) as slow as we possibly could against them,” he said. “They’re just a really good team, they very well might end up in Des Moines.

Even though East Mills won’t be going to Des Moines, Shafer said they have a lot of good things to reflect on from their 9-11 season. 

“Our effort was good throughout the game,” he said. “We’ve been through this situation a couple of times this year and every time that it’s happened the kids have responded.”

East Mills will lose three seniors who became an important part of the program during their time in school, according to Schafer.

“[I’m] very proud of the seniors and their leadership,” he said. “They’ve been role players until this year.”

 and a lot of stuff has been put on their shoulders.”