Basketball Game Preview: Dundy County-Stratton Tigers vs. Cozad Haymakers

The Dundy County-Stratton Tigers will challenge the Cozad Haymakers at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. Both squads will be entering this one on the heels of a big victory.

Dundy County-Stratton is headed into the contest after thoroughly thrashing Southwest: they outscored them in every quarter. Everything went Dundy County-Stratton's way against Southwest on Tuesday as Dundy County-Stratton made off with an 80-56 win. Given the Tigers' advantage in MaxPreps' Nebraska basketball rankings (they are ranked 104th, while the Roughriders are ranked 235th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.

August Shaw

Points (Career)

02/04/25 vs Southwest	20
01/18/25 @ Loomis	19
01/06/24 @ Wray	18
12/27/24 vs Heartland Lutheran	16
12/21/24 vs Perkins County	16

Multiple players turned in solid performances to lead Dundy County-Stratton to victory, but perhaps none more so than August Shaw, who went 8 for 16 to rack up 20 points along with five assists and five rebounds. Those 20 points gave Shaw a new career-high. Another player making a difference was Lane Bybee, who went 8 of 14 en route to 17 points and seven boards.

Dundy County-Stratton smashed the offensive glass and finished the game with 14 offensive boards. That strong performance was nothing new for the team: they've now pulled down at least eight offensive rebounds in 11 consecutive games.

Meanwhile, Cozad made easy work of Minden on Friday and carried off a 56-35 victory. The Haymakers haven't had any issues with the Whippets recently, as the game was their fifth consecutive win against them.

Cozad's victory was their third straight on the road, which pushed their record up to 18-3. They've dominated over that stretch too, winning by an average of 27.7 points. As for Dundy County-Stratton, they have been performing incredibly well recently as they've won six of their last seven matches, which provided a nice bump to their 14-4 record this season.