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By Tim Wester
Correspondent
Apparently Elkhorn in late winter is the place to be for the Union Grove basketball team.
The Broncos racked up its second straight win at Elkhorn Tuesday night with a 68-64 victory in a WIAA Division 2 regional semifinal.
Junior forward Matt Nelson rolled up a game-high 17 points, including 13 in the second half, while Joe Peterson had 11 and Riley Hale and Jake Hansen each had 10 to propel Union Grove into the regional finals against top-seeded Westosha Central Friday evening.
The Broncos, who lost twice to the Falcons in the regular season by a total of 10 points, are more than willing to play spoiler.
“I’m proud of what are kids are doing and they have improved so much,” said Union Grove coach Dave Pettit whose team beat Elkhorn 56-40 last Thursday in a regular season finale. “The way they handle pressure now is a little different.”
Elkhorn, meanwhile, saw its season come to an abrupt end after squandering a seven-point halftime lead.
“We were up 10 in the first half and I thought we were in good shape, but we lost a couple of their shooters late in the half to let them draw closer,” coach Josh Skatrud said. “Then in the second half, we couldn’t get a stop to save our lives. We didn’t lose the game because of our offense we lost because we didn’t defend very well.”
The Broncos were the benefactors of the lackluster Elks’ defense, unleashing a 14-5 run to start the second half and lead 41-39.
Hansen and Nelson led the Bronco attack with a combined 23 second-half points.
“We didn’t do much different in the second half, except play harder,” Nelson said. “Elkhorn’s physicality got to us in the first half, but coach gave us a nice halftime speech and decided we didn’t want our seniors to go out this way.”
The game remained in doubt for all of the second half, with Elkhorn finally countering the Broncos’ hot start with 9 for 21 three-point shooting.
Dayne Fisher’s three-pointer with nine minutes left gave the Elks a 51-50 lead.
But that was the last time the Elks would lead in the game as Nelson scored five of the Broncos next seven points to give the Grove its biggest lead of the game, 57-51 with seven minutes to play.
Elkhorn did all it could to chip away at the deficit the rest of the way, and eventually drew to within one point, 65-64 on Jack Keller’s three-pointer with 19 seconds left.
Union Grove quickly responded with a Nelson layup over the top of the Elks press, followed by two Pettit free throws to seal the victory.
“This was a nice win for us,” Pettit said. “A month and a half ago we would have lost this game because our kids played closed games but didn’t know how to get over the hump.”
Instead, it was Elkhorn who failed to get over the hump after a sizzling first half start.
The Elks drained five first-half three-pointers and tacked on a couple of three-point plays to open up a 29-19 lead late in the first half.
Alex Easterday and Dayne Fisher combined to score 17 points in the first half to lead the onslaught. Fisher led the Elks with 16 points, while Easterday and Ross Ingersoll each had 15.
Elkhorn, however, failed to keep the momentum in the second half.
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