The good news is the Greene County boys’ basketball team scored a season high 71 points in Gilbert on Friday and they made a season-best nine basketball from three-point range. The bad news is the Rams gave up a season-worst 86 points to the Tigers, a team that was averaging 61 points a game entering the Jan. 3 Heart of Iowa Activities Conference contest. Gilbert evened its season record at 4-4 and improved to 3-4 in the conference while the Rams fell to 1-5 overall and in league play.

Gilbert started the game making its first six shots, including a pair of three-point goals, and they had 22 points in the first six minutes of the game. The Tigers led 42-22 at the half and expanded the lead to 55-30 in the third quarter before the Rams started to get hot from the field. Greene County scored 25 points in the first 6:58 of the third quarter, three more than they had the entire first half, then added 24 more in the fourth for a 49 point second half. The closest the Rams came to the Tigers was 79-69 with 1:10 remaining . Even though it wasn’t enough to get the victory, head coach Jeramie Hinote was happy to see his young team respond in the second half. “It looked like we were going to get blown out, so I was happy to see us come back. We finally hit some shots after we talked to the kids at halftime about taking the ball inside, then passing it back out for more open shots. That worked well for us, but obviously, we can’t give up that many points and expect to win many games.”

Freshman Trey Tucker put up a new high for points scored in a game in his brief varsity career when the lefty connected for 25 to lead the Rams. Greene County made 38% of 72 shots from the field while the Tigers made 62% of their shots for the game, many of those coming on uncontested layups.

North Polk (Alleman) visits the Rams in Jefferson at the middle school gym on Tuesday, Jan. 7 for a girl/boy doubleheader. The girls’ game is at 6 p.m. with the boys to follow. Coverage on KG98 starts at 5:45 p.m. The Comets, normally strong in boys’ basketball, are 2-6 on the season after losing at home on Jan. 3 to undefeated and top 10 rated PCM (Monroe) 68-29.