Millard West is 2-8 against Papillion-LaVista South since February of 2018 but they'll have a chance to close the gap a little bit on Saturday. The Millard West Wildcats will take on the Papillion-LaVista South Titans in a tournament on Saturday. Keep an eye on the score for this one: the two teams posted some lofty point totals in their previous games.
Millard West is headed in fresh off scoring the most points they have all season. They took a 70-62 hit to the loss column at the hands of Omaha Westside on Thursday. Despite running the score up even higher than they did in their prior game last Tuesday (57), the Wildcats still had to take the loss.
The loss doesn't tell the whole story though, as several players had good games. One of the most active was Reece Carson, who went 8 of 14 on his way to 19 points and seven rebounds. The team also got some help courtesy of Jayden Kozney, who went 5 of 10 on his way to 15 points.
Meanwhile, Papillion-LaVista South was able to grind out a solid win over Elkhorn South on Friday, taking the game 68-57. Given the Titans' advantage in MaxPreps' Nebraska basketball rankings (they are ranked third, while the Storm are ranked 169th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
The match pitted two dominant forwards against one another in Bryson Bahl and Cooper Mroczek. Bahl had a solid game and posted 12 points and seven rebounds. Meanwhile, Mroczek was balling out in the loss, going 8 of 16 on his way to 28 points and eight rebounds.
Papillion-LaVista South's victory was their sixth straight at home dating back to last season, which pushed their record up to 4-1. As for Millard West, they now have a losing record at 2-3.
Rebounding is likely to be a big factor in this contest: Millard West has crashing the boards this season, having averaged 30.4 rebounds per game. However, it's not like Papillion-LaVista South struggles in that department as they've been averaging 25.5 boards. With both teams battling to corral missed shots, we'll see if one team can grab an edge.
Millard West came up short against Papillion-LaVista South in their previous meeting back in February, falling 53-42. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Bahl, who dropped a double-double on 17 points and 13 boards. Now that Millard West knows the damage he can cause, will they be able to stop him this time? Check MaxPreps.com after the match to find out.
