LBCC Men Snag Road Win at Chemeketa (Feb. 5)

 SALEM, Oregon – The Roadrunners kept a steady pace, found the right shots in Chemeketa’s largely zone defense and brought an intensity with them on their trip to the capital Feb. 4, defeating the Storm 74-69.

The win completed a 2-0 sweep in their matchups this season. And just about everyone made a steady contribution, with five men in double figures – Kaiden Ford led the scoring with 17, Jackson Oglesby added 13 on 6-for-8 shooting, Gabe Townsend had 12, while JoJo Harrower and Anthony Best each contributed 10.

“Basketball is not a capitalist game, right? This is a socialist game; the ball needs to get spread around,” Head Coach Todd Zimmermann said, “especially when we’re getting stops on defense, it gives you a chance to get out in numbers, it really gives you a chance to get going.” 

That is just what the Beaks did, grabbing 23 points off of CCC turnovers.

There were certainly moments of doubt. The game only had three lead changes, but the Willamette Valley rivals exchanged blows in the form of scoring runs and momentum shifts all evening.

“At the end it was a pretty close game, things felt like they weren’t going our way and we knew we had to step up,” Oglesby said. 

The sophomore big man, along with several teammates, came up with crucial buckets down the stretch. 

Between the 6:30 and 4-minute marks in the contest, Chemeketa went on a 10-2 run and cut the Linn-Benton lead to two, all whilst Best received his second technical foul of the night (both for showing fairly standard basketball emotions). 

But all of the energy was sucked out of the home crowd when Ogelsby threw down a wide open dunk to end the run off an assist from guard Braxton Long. 

It wasn’t all smooth sailing from there, but LB got it done. Several little things, such as 15 of 17 team free throw shooting and winning the bench scoring battle by 10 points made the narrow victory possible. 

“We were kind of just going off of them. There was nothing special tonight, it was all just perfecting our own plays, getting the bigs involved early and playing off them, trusting each other, nothing different,” Ford said. 

The Roadrunners get a week of rest before they face Umpqua at home in their next game on Wednesday, Feb. 11.


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