Spartan boys trending upward

ACKLEY - Two teams heading in opposite directions battled here Friday and the recent trends remained intact.
  
A red-hot Grundy Center club defeated the AGWSR boys’ basketball team, 66-56 during a key North Iowa Cedar League West Conference contest.
  
The Cougars lost the conference lead, slipping to 7-3 and are 9-7 overall, going 2-7 over the last nine games after a 7-0 start to the season.
  
The 10-point win was the Spartans’ fifth straight, improving to 7-8 overall and 4-6 in the league after going just 2-8 over the first 10-games. The victory also avenged a 49-34 loss in the first meeting at Grundy Center.
  
A big third quarter for Grundy Center was the difference as the visitors outscored AGWSR, 23-12 and took command after the two were knotted 29-all at the break. The Spartans made 11 three-point goals and five came in the third with two for Travis Kuester and one each for Zach Opheim, Tanner Appel and Mitchell Munson.
  
Grundy unleashed a 14-2 run that turned a 34-32 deficit early in the third into a nine-point cushion. Appel scored seven in the spurt.
  
“They outhustled us and knocked down the shots. We didn’t play as hard and execute as well as we needed. That is the short and simple of it,” stated AGWSR head coach Russ Banzhaf.