BLOOMING PRAIRIE —The Awesome Blossoms boys came away with a 59-53 win in one of the hardest fought games all year.

“The boys are going to be sore tomorrow,” head coach Jon Bruns said. “We have had two very physical games in a row this week.”

Despite many of the players having friends on the other team, BP (15-3 overall, 9-2 Gopher Conference) and United South Central (9-11 overall, 6-6 Gopher Conference) didn’t let that get in the way when they faced off against each other in the second of their Gopher Conference battles of the year.

A quick time out was called by BP head coach Jon Bruns late in the game and whatever was said did the trick as the Blosssom put together a 16-2 run on the visitors to hand them a road loss and long a ride home on the bus.

Friday night’s game got off to a slow start with both teams struggling to find the hoop.

The Rebels finally broke the scoring silence and quickly got up by six but the Blossom’s Josh Toquam brought some noise of his own for a second straight game. 

Toquam hit two of the next three of BP’s shots with each being of the three point variety putting the Blossoms up by a score of 8-6.

Sophomore Cooper Nelson put up a quick four more with Israel Clark raining down a sky three and with a couple of USC’s players able to add a basket each the game was now 15-10 favoring the home town Awesome Blossoms.

BP took a 28-26 lead to the break. 

Matt Zellmer came out in the second half, after being held to three points in the first half and immediately made his presence known by hitting nine of the next 14 shots put up by the Blossoms. Zellmer quickly brought his game total to 18 as he comes closer each game to topping the list of all-time BP scorers. 

Even with Zellmer getting back into the action, the Blossoms weren’t able to get much more of a lead on the Rebels than just a couple of points and then it was the Rebel’s turn to tip the tables as they put together some hard play and some good shooting to jump up on BP by eight points. 

The Blossoms play next against Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton (3-18 overall, 2-12 Gopher Conference) on Tuesday in Janesville.

BP     28 31 — 59

USC  26 27 — 53

BP scoring: Matt Zellmer 18, Josh Toquam 11, Cooper Nelson 10, Israel Clark 8, Josh Johnson 7, Austin Moe 2, Logan Underwood 2, Justen Ingvaldson 1

Free-throws 13-21, 6-3 pointers

USC scoring: Riley Swearingen 18, Jake Sonnek 11, Matt Stiernagle 9, Kyle Bauman 8, Nick Fure 3, William Huper 2, Riley Stenzel 2

Free-throws 7-12, 4- 3 pointers