LUTHERAN’S JACOB OGNACEVIC (No. 23) is surrounded by his team after scoring his 2,000th point Thursday. – Submitted photo

Jacob Ognacevic needed 52 points to reach 2,000, so he went out and scored that many Thursday to become the 38^th player in Wisconsin to obtain the milestone.

It was the most points the Lutheran senior has scored in a game, as he missed only two of the 23 shots he attempted during a 104-57 victory against Ozaukee.

On Jan. 17, the Valparaiso recruit moved into second place on the school’s all-time scoring list and became the first Crusaders with a total of 1,000 rebounds in an 88-73 win over Kohler.

He’s done this in less than three seasons, and only Sam Dekker (2,594) has scored more points in school history.

But as the Crusaders try to repeat as Division 5 State Champion, Ognacevic says he does not have time to reflect on all that he’s done.

“No, not right now, but I’m sure when the season’s over I’m just going to look back on it,” he said. “Right now I’m just trying to enjoy the season because I don’t really have a lot of games left. I’m not really focused on all that yet. But I’m sure once I’m done playing I’ll look back on it and just reflect. Right now I’m just trying to stay in the moment and have fun playing my last year of high school basketball.”
As of Friday afternoon, Ognacevic led the state in scoring with an average of 37.7 points per game this year and was second in rebounding with 16.9.

“I like the rebounding stat just because I’m the first person in Lutheran High School history with 1,000 boards,” Ognacevic said. “That was kind of cool for me because rebounding is something I really like to do in the game.”

Teams use a lot of different defenses to try to stop Ognacevic, but to no avail.

“Usually when I’m in the post, two guys come over and try to double-team me,” he said. “And when I’m driving, there’s guys at the baseline just giving extra help. Then I’ll see zone defenses. Every game, each team tries to throw a different defense at us. We practice a lot on how to play against a zone, or man-to-man, or like a box-in-one and all that. It’s usually a double- or triple-team. But that opens up shots for my teammates too. So it works really good.”