Spencer Iowa — The Spencer Tigers defended the home floor with a pair of wins over Western Christian Friday night. The girls final was 66-42 with the boys winning 63-56.
In the girls game Spencer led at all the breaks 19-13 at the end of the first quarter and 37-24 at the half. With a 10 point scoring edge in the third quarter the score was 54-31 going into the final 8 minutes as the Tigers claimed the win 66-42.
Spencer got a game high 18 points from Jada Piercy. Alexa Johnson hit four threes for a dozen with Haley Berends adding another 12 points for the offense. Western was led by Madison Vis with a 12 point night. With the win Spencer is off to a 6-1 start and 2-0 in the conference. Western is 2-4 on the year and 0-2 in the Lakes.
In the boys game Spencer took a 16-8 first quarter lead and was up 31-21 at halftime. The Wolfpack played much of the first half with Ty Van Essen on the bench having drawn his third foul early in the second quarter. Spencer worked through the same fate with leading scorer Karter Petzenhauser on the bench much of the second quarter with 3 fouls of his own. Spencer was able to ride out the storm and still led by 10 points at the end of the third quarter. In the fourth it was all hands on deck with Van Essen and Petzenhauser seeing significant minutes as the Wolfpack pulled to with two late in the contest.
Petzenhauser pushed a three point lead to four in the final minute and hit 5 of 6 from the line to put the game away. He would finish with a game high 22 points. He was joined in double figures by Owen Olson with 12 points and Evan Schmidt with 11. Western had four players in double figures led by Van Essen with 17. Eli Van Essen hit for 13 and Wyatt Gaulker and Tyson Boer hit for 12 points each.
With the win Spencer is 5-1 on the season and 1-1 in the conference. Western is 4-1 following their first loss of the season and are also 1-1 in the conference. Both teams have Tuesday off this week and return to action on Friday the 18th. Western will host Cherokee while Spencer is on the road to Storm Lake.
