By: Joe Blystone
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
publisher@thevillagereporter.com
METAMORA (February 9, 2024) – On a night where Evergreen honored long-time Viking coach Jerry Keifer, son and senior point guard Eli Keifer scored 22 and cracked the 1,000-point mark for his career as Evergreen beat Bryan 56-44 before a large and boisterous crowd at Evergreen.
The victory was the 424th triumph for coach Keifer, who will retire at the end of the season. “I really got caught by surprise,” Keifer said of the pregame festivities to honor his career.
“I saw a lot of guys I coached come in and thought ‘that’s kind of cool that they came to see if a kid could hit 1,000 tonight'”.
“To have all these people show up for that and then have Eli hit 1,000 and Tyson (Woodring) do what he did just made it all really special.”
After Gavin Jaessing gave the Bears an early 8-7 lead with a triple at the 2:19 mark of the first, Blade Walker’s putback and Keifer’s steal, and score brought Evergreen back to an 11-8 lead.
Jaessing’s basket inside, then his long triple regained a Bryan lead that went to 14-11 at the quarter break. One more Jaessing hoop gave the Bears their largest margin of the evening, 16-11 with 7:46 left in the half.
From that point the Viking defense clamped down hard and flash like guard Tyson Woodring led a spurt that took the Vikings from five down to seven up by halftime.
Drew Gillen began the 14-2 salvo with a stick back, Woodring had a swipe and score, the 200th steal of his career to get Evergreen within a point.
A Troy Manz’ theft and dish to Woodring, then Woodring’s score off an inbounds play put Evergreen up for good.
Woodring then capped his 10-point second quarter with a lay in off a Keifer steal with a second left in the quarter to make it 25-18 going into the locker room.
“We didn’t shoot it really well in the first half,” Keifer explained. “But defensively we have a couple adjustments and really got after it in the second quarter that brought us back and gave us a lead we could work with.”
Even though the Bears shot 50 percent in the first half, the number of looks they got was minimized by their 17 first half turnovers.
Carter Dominique’s angle jumper got Bryan back to 27-24 with 5:44 left in the third but Evergreen countered with another scoring burst, this one 13-4 to finish the quarter.
Keifer hit three straight buckets, the last off a Hunter Vaculik steal, around a Jaessing hoop to make it 33-26.
Sam Herold’s basket chopped the lead to five, but Evergreen rang up the last seven of the quarter when Keifer hit Walker and Gillen for layups and another Manz steal led to Woodring’s feed to Vaculik for a three-point play to boost the Vikings up 40-28.
Herold and Jaessing hit consecutive triples to slice the lead to single digits at 42-34 but Keifer meshed a long triple and Riley Dunbar knocked home 4/6 from the foul line to push the Vikings back up 49-36.
Woodring hit Keifer on a back cut with 1:02 left for his last basket of the night to break the 1,000-point barrier.
Keifer and Woodring each had four steals and four assists to go with their point totals. Woodring scored 14 for the game, Gillen had 12 rebounds and Walker collected 10 for the Vikings (14-4, 3-2 NWOAL).
Jaessing matched Keifer’s point total of 22 to pace Bryan (6-11, 0-5 NWOAL).
BRYAN (44) – Langenderfer 1; Kepler 2; Koenig 0; Jaessing 22; Brown 0; Dominique 12; Herold 7; Bassett 0 – 44
EVERGREEN (56) – Manz 0; Keifer 22; Woodring 14; Robertson 0; Vaculik 3; Gillen 6; Walker 4; Dunbar 7 – 56
BRYAN 14 4 10 16 – 44
EVERGREEN 11 14 15 16 – 56
