RAPID CITY - Rapid City Stevens head boys basketball coach T.J. Hay had every reason to feel optimistic about his team's chances going into Friday night's game with Aberdeen Central. Hay felt his team had an advantage in athleticism, matched up well and was playing a home game against a Golden Eagle team that was coming in off a long road trip.

What he didn't count on was a nightmarish shooting night in which the Raiders didn't convert a field goal in the first half and ended up shooting in single digits for the game. The result was a 60-29 Aberdeen Central win in a game that was not as close as the score would indicate.

"You aren't going to ever win a game shooting 8 percent from the field," Hay said. "We didn't have a single field goal in the first half. They played nice defense certainly and are a very scrappy team, but we had some decent looks early and missed about a half dozen lay-ups in the first 10 minutes, and after that we just got tight."

To say the least.

Content in the early going to put up shots from beyond the arc rather to challenge the very aggressive Aberdeen man-to-man defense, the Raiders fell behind 10-2 early. Attempts to take the ball to the hoop did not produce any field goals though the Raiders converted on 5-of-6 from the charity stripe and were down 15-5 at the end of the first quarter.

The second quarter was even worse offensively as a batch of turnovers provided few good offensive opportunities, and when sent to the free-throw line the Raiders missed those, too. At the half the Golden Eagles were up 29-8 and pulling away.

The Raiders (1-4 overall) were 0-for-18 from the floor in the first half.

The Raiders first field goal of the game would not come until the 6:38 mark of the third quarter as Casey Ommen hit a follow-up short jumper.

"The frustrating thing about it was that they did exactly what we expected them to do," Hay said. "And we are a decent shooting team, but after awhile we couldn't make a shot from anywhere. And that just took the confidence right away from us. Our good shooters were hoping the ball would go in rather than concentrating and knocking shots down."

Aberdeen Central head coach Brent Nordberg couldn't say enough about his defense.

"Every time we come over here we have a tough time shooting the ball the first night," Nordberg said. "So we really wanted our kids to play tough defense until the shooting came around. They did. I don't know if I've ever had a team play better team defense than we did tonight."

Aberdeen stretched the lead to 42-13 at the end of three as both teams substituted liberally throughout the third and fourth quarters.

Two non-starters led a balanced Aberdeen scoring attach, Zach Neubert with 10 points and Will Carlson with eight. Taylor Morshing added eight tough points inside and contributed eight rebounds as Aberdeen out-rebounded Stevens 50-37.

Stevens' Kyle Chapman came off the bench to score seven points with Jason Fredrich and Brock Estes each tallied six points.

The Raiders return to action today at home against Pierre.