BLUE EARTH – The Granada-Huntley East Chain/Truman/Martin Luther Jaguars fell in double overtime 66-57 to Sibley East in a boys basketball tournament game Friday afternoon at Blue Earth High School.

Despite the loss, Jaguars boys basketball head coach Brian Borkenhagen said he’s seeing improvements from his team, which dropped to 1-6 with the loss.

“Rebounding is better. Defense is better,” said coach Borkenhagen. “We just need to finish close shots at the basket and have good possessions all the time. That’s kind of our stress now is, we had a lot of empty possessions and regulation and then over time. So we just come down and try to do something simple and we turn it over, you know, we’re not going to win a game doing that.”

Leading the Jaguars was Eli Jensen with 17 points, while Brody Grathwohl had 16 points. Bryce Borkenhagen had 10 points and Jackson Madsen had 8 points.

The opening began with a deep 3 from Grathwohl, who drained it to give the Jaguars their first lead off the afternoon. Harstad and Grathwohl continued to stay active on offended, but Sibley East tied things up 8-8 with 14 minutes left in the first. Sibley East took control after evening the score, taking a 16-11 lead.

However, with nine minutes left in the opening frame, the Jaguars’ offense got rolling, with the help of an 8-0 run started by Madsen aided by Bryce Borkenhagen and Jensen to take the lead heading into the half, up 26-25.

A fired-up Sibley East offense entered the second half scoring often to reclaim the lead 32-31 just under four minutes into the frame and then followed up with a 5-0 run to bring the score to 37-31. A timeout by the Jaguars at the 11-minute mark helped get the Jaguars back into the mix.

A combination of 3-pointers from Jensen and Borkenhagen draining his shots brought the Jaguars level with Sibley East 46-46 with just under five minutes left in regulation. The Jaguars would pull out in front, but the consistent outside shooting of Sibley East brought things to a close 53-53 prompting an overtime period.

The teams continued the defensive stalemate for the first overtime session unable to decide the winner with either team adding only 4 points to the scoreboard tied up at 57-57 at the buzzer. After taking the court for the second four-minute overtime period, Sibley East went on an 8-0 run to finally bring the game to a close 66-57.