Braydon brings his best for Ozaukee, but Valders is just too much

A monster game by Braydon Lowrance-Eischen was not enough to overcome a late-game collapse by the Ozaukee High School boys’ basketball team Monday night against visiting Valders.

Lowrance-Eischen scored 29 points and had 21 rebounds. The junior is just 15 points shy of eclipsing the 1,000-point mark for his career.

The Warriors led, 61-51, with three and a half minutes to play in regulation, but lost in overtime, 75-71.

Ozaukee slowed down its offense, trying to hold onto the late lead, but several errant passes resulted in turnovers that led to points for Valders.

The Warriors only scored two more points the rest of regulation, a pair of free throws from Lowrance-Eischen, with 1:50 to play.

Valders’ Jacob Olson scored nine points during that stretch, including two three-pointers to close out regulation and force overtime.

Chase Mills scored six of Ozaukee’s eight overtime points, but it was not enough.

Despite the collapse, it was the first time this season that Ozaukee had five players in double digits.

CJ Dvorak and Dylan Budzicz each scored 10 points. Dvorak added 10 rebounds. Mills scored 14 points and Mason Schroeder added 10.

Last Friday, the Warriors honored their three seniors, Schroeder, Mills and Budzisz.

“One of the best parts of coaching is to be able to watch players grow from youth players to mature seniors. It has been a pleasure to coach all three because they have been able to buy in to what our program culture means,” coach Bob Domach said.

“It isn’t happenstance that we have won as many games as we have this year.  These three seniors have lead us this year and kept us connected. We will miss them.”

The Warriors stayed within 12 points of the Crusaders early before losing, 73-49.

“We started off the game well and then Sheboygan Lutheran’s depth of shooters got the best of us. We executed our game plan well for the first 10 minutes of the game but then Lutheran started making shots and we could not recover,” Domach said.

Lowrance-Eischen scored 18 points. Mills added 16 points and nine rebounds and Dvorak scored eight points.

Ozaukee, 11-12 overall, finishes the regular season at Kohler (15-8) on Thursday, Feb. 26.

Ozaukee got a 5 seed in the Division 4 tournament and hosts No. 12 Random Lake (1-23) on Tuesday, March 3. Ozaukee swept the Rams this season.