North Platte senior Creek Johnson scored 17 points in the district loss to East Buchanan.
GOWER – In what ended up being the greatest season in nearly 20 years for the North Platte boys’ basketball program (18-8) ended in heartbreaking fashion with a tough playoff loss when East Buchanan (19-8) drilled 11 shots from downtown on Feb. 20.
The final score was lopsided, 69-45, to have a bitter ending to what was a relatively delicious winter for North Platte. The Panthers have struggled on the hardwood over the years, only finishing over .500 twice and having five double-digit win seasons from 2010-2023, surpassing both feats by a comfortable margin in 2023-24.
Following a disappointing 3-14 campaign in 2021, Bradyn Kemper was brought in to rebuild the program and change the culture, having this season produce the most visible results. Kemper led the Panthers’ offense to 60.7 points per game en route to the most successful season since 2005 with 18 wins, an 8-2 record at home and a 4-3 KCI Conference record.
Braydn Kemper motions to follow through to one of his players in the final game of the best season North Platte has had since 2005.
“We all thought it was a successful season,” North Platte boys’ basketball coach Braydn Kemper said. “We won a lot of big games, we did a lot of good things and one thing that we’ve started turning towards as a program is focusing on how we can get better. We’re focusing on postseason success – not necessarily wins and losses in the regular season – and that’s going to be an exciting next step for us so I’m excited to see how that grows moving forward.”
Having a relatively young team with a starting lineup of three sophomores– Hunter Palmer, Dylan Armstrong and Brenden Matt – North Platte was hoping to end the 5-year drought without a playoff win. Being the smallest school in Class 3 due to student enrollment, the Panthers had a competitive district, earning the No. 6 seed with an 18-7 regular season record.
Exactly seven days after a 6-point loss to East Buchanan on its senior night, North Platte fell behind early in the postseason matchup when the No. 3 seed knocked down six 3-pointers in the first eight minutes and eight total in the opening half. Facing a 24-point halftime deficit, the Panthers were unable to climb out of the hole and never brought it closer than 16 points in the second half.
North Platte sophomore Brenden Matt tallied a team-high 18 points at East Buchanan High School.
“Part of it was by design, we wanted to shut down the pain and sometimes that comes with some threes. We didn’t get out to the shooters quite as well as we could have but they hit a lot of shots, moved the ball well and they were honestly playing some of the best basketball I’ve seen them play so far this year,” Kemper said.
Senior post Creek Johnson will be tough to replace, being a force downlow all year, and one of three players who will graduate this May. He finished his career with 17 points – including two threes – being one of two Panthers to make more than one field goal, along with Matt who had 18 points.
“Each senior class is tough to see go; Creek played a lot his junior and senior years and was an all-district and all-conference player who got a lot better in the three years I’ve seen him. Then you have Noah Heckman who was always there in practice and if he needed to play a minute or 10 seconds he would always play as hard as he could, and our sixth man Haiden Palmer whose season ended early with a broken thumb was a guy you could bring in off the bench if someone was in foul trouble and you trusted what he would do,” Kemper said.
Junior reserve guard Coen Rainsbarger shoots a floater on Feb. 20.
Johnson and Matt were consistently towards the top of the scoring leaders all season for North Platte, along with 6’3 junior forward Westin Snook. The third straight district opening loss of the Kemper era was a tough blow, but it’s also motivating for a squad that returns so many players, which will be led by Matt who put up over 10,000 shots in the last offseason to improve his shot accuracy this season my an impressive mark.
“We had our end of the season meeting to bring all the guys together and talk about the year and about things moving forward. One thing we talked about is we took another step forward in our program in a lot of ways, now the next step is a district win; I don’t want to be the first group of teams done, I want to keep practicing and in order to do that, we have to step up individually to get better in our games,” Kemper said.