The December snowstorms have cancelled multiple opportunities for Ellsworth boys basketball to take the court. Most recently, the team’s rivalry matchup with Prescott scheduled for Dec. 18 was pushed back to Jan. 24. What it has not stopped is the work behind the scenes.

The Panthers are 1-1 this season, beating Black River Falls 93-84 and losing 65-63 to Saint Croix Central.

The season opener was an interesting one. The high-scoring bout came against Black River Falls junior Braylon Backaus, who scored 44 points on 16-of-32 shooting. The Tigers have not lost since at 5-1 on the young season, and Backaus has not slowed down at an unheard of 36.2 points per game. Regardless, Ellsworth held firm control of the lead in the second half.

Game two at Saint Croix Central was as close as possible the whole way through. Ellsworth led 33-32 at the half after a late run from SCC in the final minutes. The second half featured countless ties and lead changes, with SCC sneaking out a 65-63 win.

“A lot of good, some bad. We’re still learning a little bit of a different style of play,” Head Coach Derek Staley said. “Overall, I’m happy with where we’re at.”

Last season, Ellsworth ran a lot of two-post sets, working the ball into six-foot-seven George Rohl and six-foot-four Gavin Puhrmann. The result was Rohl leading the team at 14.1 points per game and Puhrmann landing in third with 9.3 per game. While Rohl returns for his senior season, Puhrmann graduated, leading to some system changes to both the offense and the defense.

Notably, Ellsworth’s three leading scorers in the season opener and game two were three entirely different student-athletes. Ellsworth was led against the Tigers by senior Jack Stoltenburg with 25, senior Omar Coulson with 16 and junior Spencer Peterson with 16. Against SCC, senior Gavin Klos led the way with 21 points, Rohl followed with 15 and junior Jacob Michels rounded out the trio with eight.

“We have a ton of depth. We have a bunch of kids that can go score for us on any night, and a lot of guys that can shoot it,” Staley said. “We’re pretty unselfish… it’s a fun thing to have as a coach.”

The cancellations have set Ellsworth up with three consecutive non-conference matchups, the first coming at the Hamline University tournament Dec. 20 against Southwest Christian.

“Southwest Christian is a good school, really good coach in David Flom and they’re really long,” Staley said. “They’ve got a lot of size across the board, so it’s going to be a nice test for us.”

Ellsworth follows with games against Rice Lake and Adams-Friendship before returning to conference play against Somerset. To have success, the Panthers are going to have to make up for the lost time of game action being postponed.
“Our defensive habits. We’re struggling with some closeouts and some rotations,” Staley said. “We had to kind of change what we were doing defensively, so I expected that to take some time, but I think we need to speed up our improvement there, and that’s what our focus has been on this week.”