Gatlauk has Lincoln #1 and ready for the next challenge
Diang Gatlauk has led Sioux Falls Lincoln to the top ranked spot in Class AA with a 6-0 record. Gatlauk caught up with PHD today.
“What I’ve learned so far this year about my basketball team is that we are very good when we play together and that we need to work on our communication skills on the defensive side,” Diang said.
The Patriots have defeated all the Class AA schools in Sioux Falls this year (O’Gorman, Washington, and Roosevelt) plus they beat Brandon Valley and top ten ranked Marshall from Minnesota.
“In a couple of weeks we head to Minnesota to face Hopkins and Patrick Henry who I heard are pretty good teams,” Diang said. “Hopkins has two players over 6”10 so that’ll be pretty tough.”
The Hopkins Royals are the second ranked big school team in Minnesota and those 6-10 players are Wisconsin signed Joseph Hedstrom and top 150 ranked junior Zeke Nnaji who has six high major offers. Minneapolis Henry is 6-1 on the year.
These will be good tests for Lincoln now that they’ve passed all their local tests so far.
“As a team we already have good enough players we just need to work a little bit on our chemistry but that should eventually come,” Gatlauk said. “I want to try to be the best leader I can be to help us win as many games as possible and to become a better team.”
So far so good as Gatlauk has scored around 20 a game and next year Diang will play at the division one level of junior college basketball.
“Just a couple of months ago I signed my letter of intent to play at NDSCS, a D1 juco up in North Dakota.”