Boyle County’s season is off to a winning start.

The Rebels defeated Somerset 61-56 in their home opener Tuesday, the first game of a new era for the boys basketball team.

Head coach Steve Adams started two freshmen — Aden Slone and Luke Imfeld — and finished the game with three freshmen (Slone, Imfeld and Hagan Webb) on the court.

There are plenty of questions for the Rebels this early in the season, but Adams said it’s clear that his team will rely on balanced scoring each and every night.

“We’re going to have to have balanced scoring if we’re going to be a good team,” the coach said. “All good teams have balanced scoring, it makes the other team have to guard everybody. If they only have to guard one or two people, you’re easy to guard. The kids have done a good job, but we’re still learning our roles, who can do what. We’re still trying to figure out our rotations. There’s still a lot of unknowns.”

Slone led all scorers with 21 points (8-for-10 from the field, 3-for-4 from 3-point range) and added four rebounds in 27 minutes of action. Will Imfeld, a senior, scored 13 points and Luke Imfeld, his brother, added 11. Seniors Caleb Jackson (six points, three rebounds, two assists) and Jacob Lassiter (three points, four rebounds) rounded out the Rebels’ starting five.

It was a strong defensive start for Boyle against Somerset (2-2), holding the visitors to just six points in the first quarter.

Somerset switched to a full-court press midway through the second quarter, but Boyle did well to hold a 31-22 lead at halftime.

In the third quarter, Somerset’s press caused more problems, cutting the Rebels’ lead to five after three quarters. Somerset took a 52-51 lead midway through the first quarter, its first lead since 1-0 at the beginning of the game.

But the Rebels bounced back and put the game away late.

“Probably the biggest thing I’m proud of, we played well in spurts, faced adversity and battled through it and figured it out,” Adams said. “We made some big plays when we needed to. We’ve got a lot to work on, but the kids played hard. I can’t think of a kid that didn’t contribute something to the win. We’re going to need that. We’ve got two starters in street clothes. We finished the game with three freshmen and two seniors. Any given night, it could be anybody.”

Those two starters out — Grant Hotchkiss and Reese Smith — were injured during football season and won’t be back until the calendar turns to 2019.

That’ll allow for different players to step up, and that’s what happened Tuesday: Webb scored four points and had three rebounds and junior Ethan Carter added a triple and two rebounds.

“We’re going to get better, kids are going to get better,” Adams said. “A lot of them were probably scared to death out there, being the first game. It was our first game, their third, which makes a big difference. I was proud of our effort and how we fought through adversity when we could’ve folded.”

 

Box score

 

SOMERSET 6 16 21 13 — 56

AT BOYLE 13 18 17 13 — 61

 

POINTS — Somerset: Chase Walker 15, Dakota Acey 14, Kade Grundy 9, Dylan Burton 8, Jase Bruner 5, Kaiya Sheron 4. Boyle: Aden Slone 21, Will Imfeld 13, Luke Imfeld 11, Caleb Jackson 6, Hagan Webb 4, Ethan Carter 3, Jacob Lassiter 3.