There’s no place like home for Raiders

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany – The Kaiserslautern basketball teams have enjoyed home cooking to start the season, not having to leave the Kaiserslautern Military Community once before Christmas.

After Saturday’s matchups with Lakenheath at Kaiserslautern High School, however, that changes. On the other side of the winter break, the Raiders don’t have a weekend home game until Jan. 31 – and that’s just the boys’ team. The next girls’ weekend home game comes Feb. 7 – the squad’s last regular-season contest.

“What we wanted to focus on was this is our home court, we want to get the wins here while we can,” Kaiserslautern girls forward Hazel Sanders said of Saturday’s contests.

The Raiders accomplished that with commanding victories over the Lancers. The girls stayed unbeaten with a 57-34 victory in the early afternoon, and the boys bounced back from a midweek loss to win 63-35.

The wins gave the girls a 4-0 record (3-0 in Division I) before the break, while the boys improved to 3-1, 2-1.

“It sets up the intensity throughout the break, for all the other teams to be ready,” Kaiserslautern boys center Garrett Vitter said.

Girls Game Recap

The Raiders trailed by a point 4 minutes in Saturday’s contest, making too many uncharacteristic errors for coach Aaron Scalise’s liking. Thus, he bellowed at his players to calm down and play their game.

Which is exactly what the home team did. Kaiserslautern ended the quarter on a 19-0 run and never looked back.

“We have this thing where we’re not going to panic,” Scalise said. “It was almost four minutes until we got into the flow of our game. I didn’t call a timeout because we’re going to be in this mode where we’re going to get through these rough patches and be able to move forward.”

While Scalise suggested excitement and nerves could have affected the team’s play, Sanders pointed out the importance of self-motivation starting from the opening whistle.

“We need to realize that not every mistake is the end of the game,” Sanders said. “If it’s still the first half, we’ve got more of the game to play. We need to continue to keep our heads up in the game.”

Once Kaiserslautern got rolling, the Lancers (0-4, 0-4) faced a multi-pronged attack. Three Raiders reached double figures. Elizabeth Marriott led the way with a double-double of 15 points and 10 rebounds, while Vernesha Oliver recorded 14 points in the first three periods, and Sanders posted all 13 of her points over the first 24 minutes.

Olivia Illka dropped seven points in the second quarter to stop an 11-2 Lakenheath run, and Shayla King (six points) had a pair of buckets early on to jump-start the Raiders offensively.

“We know we can ride the hot hand from time to time; someone who’s a shooter and gets hot, we’re going to feed her that person the ball,” Scalise said. “But it’s always nice to see that everybody gets involved, everybody’s buying into our system and everybody’s contributing really well.”

First-year Lakenheath coach Mitchell Wagner credited the Lancers for their efforts, especially late in the game. After a Marriott jumper made it 57-23 with 5 minutes, 43 seconds left, the Lancers scored the final 11 points of the game. Solymar Brown totaled a game-high 19 points to pace the visitors.

“There’s a lot of room for improvement and a lot of potential in this team,” Wagner said. “They continue to fight down the stretch no matter what the score was, and I appreciate that effort.”

Boys Game Recap

Kaiserslautern still was licking its wounds from Tuesday’s loss to crosstown rival Ramstein when Lakenheath walked into the Kaiserslautern High School gym on Saturday. Unfortunately for the Lancers (2-2, 2-2), the Raiders channeled their frustrations into a comfortable 28-point victory.

Kaiserslautern’s advantage never dipped below double digits after Caleb Ringer stole the ball and passed it to Xavier Nelson with 6:39 remaining in the first half.

“The Ramstein game humbled us and let us know, ‘Hey, we still got work to do,'” Kaiserslautern coach Anthony Lopez said. “We wanted to come out today and have a good performance going into the break 3-1. I know it was very important for the kids just morale-wise.”

The Raiders spread the points, with eight of the nine dressed getting into the scorebook. Just two of them scored more than 10 points – Ringer with 14 and Vitter with a game-high 17.

As the game wore on, Kaiserslautern fed Vitter more and more. With seven offensive boards, the sophomore scored all his points in the paint or from the charity stripe, where he went 3 of 5.

“He’s, in my opinion, one of the top bigs in DODEA, and we’ve got to make a more concerted effort to play inside-out,” Lopez said of Vitter. “We have good shooters, but that kid’s got to touch the ball.”

Vitter was surprised about his enlarged role Saturday, but he said he didn’t change his game. “Honestly, I just played how I usually do,” Vitter said. “The ball came to me; I just reacted.”

Like the girls, the Lakenheath boys staved off the mercy rule in the fourth quarter and created an 11-4 run to end the game. That spurt gave first-year coach London Burrell numerous positives heading into the two-week pause.

“It’s the little things we got to work on, such as effort, running up and down the court,” Burrell said. “It takes time, but a lot of these teams have been together. So, of course, being a newer team, it’s a lot harder to get that gel, but once they get it, we’ve seen it – they’re good to go.”

Jaylon Gatewood had a double-double of 15 points and 11 rebounds, while Gideon Toure chipped in with 12 points and five steals in the losing effort.