Gerrard Diaz, gdiaz@shawanoleader.com
If the Seymour High School boys basketball team overlooked Shawano, you can bet the Thunder won’t make that mistake again.
The Hawks upset previously undefeated Seymour 49-48 in a Bay Conference game Tuesday night in Seymour.
Shawano gave up 18 and 16 points to Seymour stars Dakota Oskey and Sandy Cohen, respectively, but held the rest of the team to just 14 points.
“Seymour is obviously a very talented team with their two-headed monster of Sandy Cohen and Dakota Oskey, but we’ve got some talented kids ourselves,” Shawano’s first-year coach Chris Kellett said. “The kids never gave up, they kept playing and we were able to eke it out at the end.”
Outscored 18-10 in the first quarter, the Hawks (5-1, 3-0 Bay) rallied to cut the deficit to 24-20 at halftime. Trailing 34-29 after three quarters, Shawano outscored Seymour (5-1, 4-1 Bay) 20-14 in the fourth to upset the state’s top ranked Division 2 team in the wissports.net coaches’ poll.
Travis Geenen supplied some early offense for Shawano on his way to 10 points. Will Cox scored a team-high 17, hitting all seven of his attempts.
“Will Cox was absolutely outstanding tonight,” Kellett said. “Everything was toward the rim, and he was aggressive. He had some key buckets.”
The coach also pointed to Sajen Kneuppel’s fourth-quarter effort against Cohen and a pair of Zeke Gueths buckets as being keys to the win.
Cohen, who is committed to play for Marquette University next year, scored nine of his 16 points from the free-throw line. Oskey has committed to play for St. Norbert College.
Shawano hit 50 percent of its shots from the field, while Seymour made 38 percent.
Kellett said getting the win was great, but he wants his team to stay focused.
“I’m just looking at one game at a time,” Kellett said. “Our goal is to be playing best toward the end of the year. It’s obviously great that we got this win tonight, but we’ve got to keep building off of it. We’ll start to get everyone’s best shots and we won’t be overlooked from now on.”
Shawano (49)<.strong>
Geenen 4 0-0 10, Kneuppel 2 2-2 6, Raddant 1 0-0 3, Dallas 1 0-0 3, Sousek 2 0-1 6, Cox 7 2-2 17, Gueths 2 0-0 4
Seymour (48)
Oskey 6 5-6 18, Cohen 3 9-10 16, Jefson 2 0-0 5, Bucholz 4 1-2 9
Shawano 10 10 9 20 — 49
Seymour 18 6 10 14 — 48