BLOOMING PRAIRIE — The Southland boys basketball team has taken an aggressive approach on offense this season and that mind-set paid off for Rebels as they used a second half surge to beat Blooming Prairie 61-45 in BP Monday.

The Rebels trailed 28-24 with 15:10 left in the game and senior Thomas Bottema was struggling with his shot. But after a quick pep talk from his coach, Bottema found his shooting stroke in the second half as he finished with 23 points and four second half three-pointers.

As Bottema picked up his scoring, BP’s offense cooled off and the Awesome Blossoms (9-12 overall) scored just six points in the game’s last eight minutes.

“We started working hard on defense and good defense leads to good offense,” Bottema said. “Every day in practice coach tells us to keep shooting, even if we’re missing. It keeps our confidence up. Even if we’re getting down on ourselves, he puts us back up.”

Southland head coach Matt Webber said he wants his players to shoot themselves out of their slumps instead of refusing to shoot. He gave Bottema a little push to get going and it worked on Monday.

“I’ve been pushing that this year. That’s got to be our style,” Webber said. “We’ve got to keep going for it on offense. We’ve got to keep pushing the ball and be up tempo.”

The first half saw BP lead by as many as six points, but the second half was a back-and-forth affair before the Rebels (11-7 overall) began to force turnovers and get some breakaway hoops. BP, which has now lost five straight games, had 24 turnovers and Southland had just nine turnovers.

“There’s times where we over-dribble,” BP head coach Nate Piller said. “We need to see the court a little better and communicate a little better. We just need to make a jump stop and make the easy pass. This is one that you regret not taking care of, because we don’t play a lot of teams in our subsection and we want to make them count.”

Jared Landherr had 16 points, four assists and five rebounds for the Rebels and he was able to have an impact in the open court in the second half.

“We got out on the run on them and we got more confident in the second half,” he said. “This is a big win for us.”

Jake Ressler had 19 points and nine rebounds for BP and Gabe Hagen had 12 points, eight rebounds and four assists.

Southland 21  40  —  61

BP 22  23  —  45

Southland scoring: Thomas Bottema, 23; Jared Landherr, 16; Chris Webber, 11; Lee Wilson, 5; Garret Mullnebach, 2; Parker Brigham, 2; Carl Mueller, 2; free throws: 60 percent (9-for-15); rebounds: 30 (Webber, 13); turnovers: 9

BP scoring: Jake Ressler, 19; Gabe Hagen, 12; Max Romeo, 9; Ben Smith, 3; Seth Bedenbaugh, 1; free throws: 33 percent (5-for-15); rebounds: 33 (Ressler, 9); turnovers: 24