An “eventful” road-trip to the Iron Range to face the Hibbing Bluejackets brought Rockford a painful loss in a 82 – 70 game that was much closer than the score indicates. Rockford jumped out to an 11 – 4 lead early in the game and with the in-fighting and arguing that started within the Hibbing squad it looked like the Rockets may walk away with the game. But… something suddenly changed as the Bluejackets fought back, started to knock down the 3 ball, and entered the half only down by 3.
You will rarely hear me say anything like this, but the officiating the 2nd half was absurd. Don’t want to beat on it too much but there were calls made for one-side that were repeated over and over and over on the other side and never called. Rockford did get to be part of Hibbing’s Sophomore Raymon Brau reaching the 1,000 point mark in his High School career. Congrats!
In any case, my understanding is the adventure home on the bus was as “exciting’ as the game itself driving home in essentially blizzard like conditions for 2/3 of the route… with a totally nuts driver from Texas… who had never driven in snow before… and that was just the start of the fun. Good or bad… doesn’t matter, life-time memories were generated.
Rockford falls to 12 – 6 on the season, 4 – 2 in the section and 4 – 4 in the conference.
Next up starts the “repeat” gauntlet of conference games:
- Tue 2 /4 HOME vs Watertown (varsity game time 7pm)
- Fri 2/7 AWAY at Annandale (varsity game time 7:15pm)
- Mon 2/10 AWAY at Litchfield (unsure on game-time check with the school / conference board)
- Tue 2/11 AWAY at Dassel-Cokato (varsity game time 7:30pm)
- Fri 2/14 HOME vs Glencoe-Silver Lake (varsity game time 5:30pm)
Good news is the Hibbing gym had outstanding lighting for photography work. I shot the whole JV and Varsity games, links below.