Player of the Week: Zack Lasek
When the season started, Highland, Riverside freshman Zack Lasek was a bit overwhelmed with the speed of varsity hoops — but it didn’t take long for him to get acclimated.
He scored the Huskies’ first bucket of the season, but was admittedly a bit dazed when doing so. Now — and especially last week — he’s become the team’s go-to scorer.
“I remember the first game right after tip-off I was kind of lost, I didn’t know what was going on. I scored right away, but that was because we had a set play, but I was almost dizzy because I was kind of overwhelmed,” said Lasek.
“But as the season has progressed, after the first couple of minutes, after I start to get going, it’s actually kind of easy to get going.”
Last Monday night, in a Huskies win over Mid Prairie-Wellman, the freshman sensation had his best game of the season, netting 21 points and blocking a season-high 6 shots.
“I was going up against a kid who was a few inches taller than me, so I haven’t really had to deal with that too much yet. But he didn’t really play much in the second half, so I was going up against shorter competition,” said Lasek. “So when people tried to post up, my coach told me to keep my arms straight up and they’d shoot the ball right into me, which they did.”
His second game of the new year was the next night against Wapello, he topped his previous night’s performance by scoring a new season and career-high 26 points and also snared 9 rebounds.
“I think the momentum I gained in the Mid-Prairie game kind of carried into the Wapello game and gave me a lot of confidence shooting the ball,” said Lasek. “My teammates trusted me and kept feeding me the ball, and it seemed like everything I was shooting just happened to go in — I had a lot of mid-range jump shots going in.”
With 1,984 votes, Lasek has had one of the highest voting totals so far this season. He narrowly edged out Central Decatur’s Carter Boothe, who amassed 1,757 votes.
“My mom found out about it and she said something about it to a few people at her work. And then my guidance counselor at school found out and sent out an email so then the students started voting – and from there on the votes started really going up,” said Lasek.
“I had a lot of support, a lot more than I would have imagined.”
Voting Totals
Zach Lasek — 1,984
Carter Boothe — 1,757
Joe Smoldt — 482
Drew Olson — 201
Dev Patel — 313