Click the thumbnails to see photos and videos, and to hear post-game comments from Oskar and Reece Kangas.

IRON MOUNTAIN---The Iron Mountain High School boys basketball team bounced back from last week's loss to Westwood by beating the North Central Jets, 64-58, Monday night in Iron Mountain.
 

The game was played before a large crowd, dressed in a sea of orange, as the Iron Mountain Schools honored and raised money for the Escanaba Eskymo kids whose parents were killed in a horrific traffic crash last Friday afternoon.

The Mountaineers had the lead for most of the game, although Coach Bucky Johnson still found plenty to find fault with as his team could not put away the pesky Jets.

Iron Mountain led by as many as 14 points before the Jets climbed to within two possessions late in the game. But an out-of-bounds pass from Reece Kangas to his cousin Oskar for a two-handed slam dunk ended the Jets' late comeback hopes.

Reece Kangas, a junior, led the Mountaineers with 22 points, with Oskar, a sophomore, right behind with 21 points.

“I felt good coming into the game,” Oskar Kangas said. “I knew we needed a bounce-back after the Westwood game, where we shot horrendously. We knew they (NCA) were big, starting five seniors, and they were going to be physical. We knew they liked to dribble-drive, so we had a lot of 1-on-1 and tried our best to get in a help position on help defense.”
 

“I feel we did great,” Reece Kangas added. “We got a lot of open layups, and and-one's. We got to the free throw line, we've just got to convert.”

Which will give the longtime coach, Johnson, something to growl about at practice on Tuesday.

Despite free throw woes, Iron Mountain improved to 11-1 as the regular season reaches its halfway point. The Mountaineers will travel to Manistique for a make-up game Wednesday night, and then go to Ishpeming Friday night.

The IM-Manistique game will be broadcast live on FM-98.5 and AM-1490 in Manistique, and on the Maverick page at www.radioresultsnetwork.com.

For North Central, it was a second-straight loss to a bigger school, after also losing to Kingsford last Thursday night. NCA was led by Luke Gorzinski's 17 points. Connor Florenski added 12 points and Dylan Plunger chipped in with ten points.

The Jets are now 10-2 on the season, and will be back in action Tuesday night at home against Carney-Nadeau. That game will be broadcast on FM-107.3 and on-line on the Eagle page at www.radioresultsnetwork.com.