The Mid-Prairie boys and girls basketball teams impressed the home crowd in Wellman Thursday night, as both posted victories in a conference double header with West Liberty. In the girls contest Mid-Prairie sprinted out to a 14-4 lead after the first quarter en route to a 59-29 win. The Hawks controlled the glass, shot well from the floor and forced more than 30 West Liberty turnovers. Mid-Prairie led by 17 at the half, and continued to build on that lead after the break with outstanding ball movement in the high-low post offense. Golden Hawk Head Coach Stephen Bender talked after the game about his teams offensive effort and the big night by Taylor Kurtz.
“We have some good shooters who can hit that shot at the free throw line and when they have to come out and guard that leaves [Kurtz] isolated inside,” Bender said. “That is something that we’ve wanted to do all year but we really haven’t been really patient on offense, but you could see from the start of the game we were much more patient, we worked the ball, we wanted to look to attack the basket or get the ball inside, and we did a great job of getting the ball to the high post and then finding [Kurtz] down low.”
The Golden Hawks were led by Kurtz and her career high 24 points. The Mid-Prairie girls are now 1-3 overall 1-2 in the River Valley Conference.
The boys game featured two athletic clubs and Mid-Prairie was able to hold on for a 71-59 win. The Mid-Prairie guard court came out with guns blazing as Dayton Hall and Nick Stimson combined for seven first half three pointers. Hall took things over in the second quarter with 15 points by himself. Even after all of the offense Mid-Prairie found themselves up just 15-14 after the first quarter and holding a 41-27 lead going into halftime.
The Mid-Prairie offense cooled down in the second half while West Liberty’s Kyle Miller stayed hot. The Comet guard finished with a game high 29 in doing his part to keep West Liberty in it. West Liberty also changed to a 1-3-1 zone that gave the Golden Hawks fits into the fourth quarter allowing the Comets to get within two points of the lead. Following a time out the Golden Hawks came out and patiently picked the zone apart for three straight lay ups forcing a change from West Liberty and putting the game out of reach. After the game Head Coach Chris Kern talked about the change in strategy to break the West Liberty 1-3-1 zone.
“Well what we were going to do was trying to counter what they were doing, and they were trapping a lot out front, so we put in either Christian Johnson or Nathan Faselt at high post and look there, and when they came up to trap we either looked high post or down to the corner, and we just weren’t doing a really good job of that at first and it bothered us,” Kern said. “But we finally figured it out there and that kind of cured it.”
Offensively, Mid-Prairie was led by Hall’s 17 points, Stimson added 16 and Christian Johnson posted 14 off the bench. The win makes it two straight for the Golden Hawks.