Photo by Chris Drummond RTR Knight Aiden Wichmann pulls up from to hit a three in transition on Tuesday evening against the Minneota Vikings.

MINNEOTA — The Russell-Tyler-Ruthton Knights boys’ basketball team had eight days off since an impressive home win over Canby. The Knights came out victorious again over the Minneota Vikings, 71-39, on Tuesday evening.

The game started off great for both teams. The Knights used a motion offense to set picks and get back-door layups throughout the first few minutes of the game. The Vikings used an outside attack of hitting 3-pointers with two of them coming from Ryan Dalager. RTR held a slim lead over Minneota 14-12 in the first half.

Then, it was all Knights after that.

The Knights suffocated the Vikings on defense, which allowed them to get space in transition. They capitalized by scoring easy layups and knocking down wide-open 3-point shots. The Knights closed the half on a 24-2 run, leading at the break 38-14.

The Vikings would come out in the second half on a 13-4 run, cutting the lead to 15, but that is as close as the Vikings would get. The Knights continued to pour it on in the second half and ended up winning going away. It is their third consecutive win of the season.

“It is a situation where we want to set the tone defensively every night that we are on the floor,” Knights head coach Gravley said. “We did a great job of holding them to one shot. Then we got out in transition where we were able to space the floor and knock down open shots.”

The Vikings scored 25 second-half points but gave up a lot of buckets on the inside due to their lack of rebounding and consistency with effort.

“We came out pretty good and executed some things,” Vikings head coach Chad Johnston said. “At times I thought our defensive effort was good and other times it wasn’t. That is something I cannot accept. We can control our effort. We have to stick together and go through the bumps and bruises of the season. We are establishing a new system, principles and have only had five days of practice so far. We will keep grinding and working, we just have to stay positive.”

Drew Werkman had game-highs with 20 points and 12 rebounds on the night. Cody Wichmann had 17 points and Aiden Wichmann had 14 points with a team-high seven assists.

“It is really nice to see my teammates make shots,” Aiden Wichmann said. “Makes my job easy and it is nice to have those guys make me look good.”

Aiden Wichmann also chimed in on the lack of hype about being defending section champions

“Last year we won the section, but I feel like teams are still overrating us,” Aiden Wichmann said.”We feel like we didn’t get the hype that we should have. We are using that as a chip on our shoulder.”

Minneota (0-2) will play their next game Thursday at 7:30 at Lakeview, while Russell-Tyler-Ruthton (3-0) will host Southwest Minnesota Christian at the same time.