Photo by Chris Drummond Minneota Vikings’ Ryan Dalager brings the ball up the court in Friday night’s tilt against the Yellow Medicine East Sting.

MINNEOTA– The Minneota Vikings boys defeated the Yellow Medicine East Sting 56-46 on Friday evening behind a career-high in points for Ryan Dalager with 27.

The Vikings and the Sting both started slow. Missing a lot of shots and having a lot of turnovers. Bryce Sneller would get going late in the half as he was scoring inside with the height advantage the Sting possessed. Sneller and the Sting would hold on to a slim lead at halftime of 20-19.

“At halftime, the team told me that they wanted to press,” Vikings head coach Chad Johnston said. “I told them okay, well if you decide to do that, then you better execute it.”

In the second half, Dalager and the Vikings imposed their will on the game.

The Vikings came out in a press defense, which sped up the Sting and caused them to turn over the ball and not be able to control the pace of the game.

Dalager came out and hit a corner three to propel the Vikings ahead 40-39 with under eight minutes left in the game.

The Vikings closed out the game on a 16-7 run and most of the scoring was done by Dalager.

“My teammates put me in a great spot to score today,” Dalager said. “We struggled in the first half but we were getting good looks but they weren’t falling. They were comfortable with playing slow and we wanted them to play faster. We caused some turnovers in the second half and were able to pull away.

Bryce Sneller had 16 points and 10 rebounds in the loss for the Sting. Drew Almich had 10 points in the contest and Archie Larose had 11 points.

The Sting were without started DJ Whitebuffalo and have three other players out dealing with injuries.

“This has been a long week for us,” Sting head coach Logan DeBlieck said. “We have guys out and we are playing are guys a lot of minutes. We just didn’t have the legs to close out the game.”

The Minneota Vikings will be back in action on Tuesday as they will host the Lakeview Lakers. The YME Sting will be back in action on Tuesday when they travel to Tyler to face off against the Russell Tyler Ruthton Knights.

Both games will tip at 7:15 p.m.