DEVILS LAKE — It wouldn’t be Kindred vs. Devils Lake if it didn’t have a little drama.
In a rematch of the last two Division A state championship games, the shorthanded Firebirds went neck-and-neck with the defending champions on Friday.
Devils Lake had two leads in the fourth quarter but couldn’t hold on. The Firebirds (7-5) dropped their fifth of their last six games in a 69-56 loss to No. 3 Kindred (9-1).
“I was proud of our progression that we made this week, and then into this game,” Devils Lake head coach Dustin Brodina said. “I told the guys they competed hard and followed the game plan pretty well. It was about three minutes in a stretch in the third quarter where we just kind of forgot about the game plan, and we didn’t execute, and made some mistakes. And they’re a great team, so they’re going to capitalize on it.”
For Kindred, it was a bounceback from a loss to then-No. 3, now-No. 2 Central Cass. The Vikings had been the undefeated No. 1 before the Squirrels stole their thunder.
The game featured a whopping 16 lead changes. Oddly, there were exactly four in each quarter.
Playing before a raucous crowd at the Devils Lake Sports Center, including the upper level of bleachers, Devils Lake and Kindred nearly recreated their instant classic from last March’s championship in Bismarck.
“It’s always fun to play in front of a packed crowd; maybe a little bit of a tournament atmosphere, I would say. It kind of gets the guys a little more excited, too,” Brodina said. “But it’s fun playing them. They’re a great team.”
Multiple players on both sides met in November’s football semifinals, too, when Devils Lake won on a missed kick in overtime. Star wide receiver Brooks Bakko, who’s received numerous FBS offers, is the Vikings’ starting point guard and led them with 15 points Friday night. Their starting quarterback, Gabe Whipple, added 14.
Bryar Exner, Kade Fee and Talan Gregory — all starters for Devils Lake — were on the Firebirds state champion football team.
It was a back-and-forth beginning. Alex Hammond had Devils Lake’s first six points, while Bakko had six of Kindred’s first eight.
Despite Bakko’s early scoring, he went a significant portion of the first half without any points. The Vikings hit four triples before halftime — two off the bench by Jackson Schlieman, and one each from Whipple and Gabriel Iverson.
Devils Lake’s best scorer, Ben Brodina, had one three-pointer but was otherwise quiet in the first half. The Firebirds kept up early on, but their scoring hit a major drought in the second quarter. Over the last five-plus minutes of the half, they scored exactly one point. They went nearly four minutes without scoring anything.
It allowed Kindred to scoot ahead, 29-23 by halftime.
“We missed a lot of layups, which is never good,” Brodina said. “And we shoot a lot of contested layups in practice.”
When the Firebirds came back from the locker room, the duo of Brodina and Gregory started landing shots. Brodina hit four triples in the third quarter, while Gregory hit three.
They each had a go-ahead and tying shot. Eli Maack countered with his own go-ahead three from the corner, as part of a nine-point quarter for him.
After Brodina’s fifth triple of the game — giving him a game-high 16 points — Devils Lake led by multiple possessions late in the third quarter.
But Kindred hit some shots down the stretch of the period. Iverson had an and-one, and Carter Gronwold got a lucky bounce at the buzzer to jolt the Vikings back ahead, 50-49.
Bakko committed his third and fourth fouls in the third quarter, limiting his production a little bit.
Gregory, who scored zero points in the first half, nearly played hero for the Firebirds. He had a pair of go-ahead buckets early in the fourth quarter. He finished with 13 points on the night.
But Whipple landed his second triple of the game, sparking an 11-0 Kindred run. The Vikings made three consecutive three-pointers, with Graham Hesse and Iverson following Whipple. Brodina tried to counter but missed a few of his own three-ball attempts.
And that stretch right there was essentially the difference.
“We just didn’t rotate enough,” Brodina said. “We didn’t close out enough. Could have been a little bit of dead legs, three and a half quarters in. But hopefully we can correct those mistakes, and towards the end of the year, we’re not making those mistakes.”
Gregory’s two buckets were the Firebirds’ only field goals from their starters in the fourth quarter.
They rode hot streaks from Brodina and Gregory to stay in it in the third quarter — but their offense wasn’t consistent enough throughout the night.
“We just need leadership guys to step up. And that’s kind of what we’re lacking at times,” Brodina said. “When we need a bucket, a team comes down and scores a couple possessions, we need to stack a good possession and get somebody to score. And our consistency has not been there.”
So despite how tight things were for most of the night, Devils Lake lost by double digits.
A couple months after the Firebirds broke the Vikings’ hearts in football, Kindred got the latest laugh.
“Hopefully the rivalry continues,” Brodina said.
Then, with a laugh, he added, “Maybe we’ll see them in the state tournament again or something.”
Devils Lake will play Dunseith at approximately 6:30 p.m. Saturday on the second day of the Devils Lake Youth Activities Shootout.
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