The final date on the 2019 portion of the KCII basketball broadcast calendar came Friday at Hillcrest Union in Kalona where visiting Winfield-Mt. Union and the Hillcrest Ravens split a Superconference doubleheader. In the girls contest it was the Wolves taking 59-26 win. The Ravens opened the scoring with a Yani Gutierrez three pointer. WMU answered with 11 straight and led 14-5 after one quarter. The Wolves advantage stood at 31-17 at the half. Out of the locker room, Winfield-Mt. Union found another gear. The Wolves scored 20 in a row and shut out Hillcrest in the frame taking a 51-17 lead into the fourth quarter and coasting to the victory. After the game, Mitch Wachs, head coach of the Lady Wolves, talked about his team’s night and highlighted the third quarter. “Our defensive intensity led the way. In that first half I felt like we outplayed them but with 30 seconds left before halftime it was only a 10 point game. I challenged the team to put the game away in the first four minutes of the third quarter. I kept looking at scoreboard in the third quarter and they were stuck in 17. There was a time out with about four minutes left in the quarter and in the huddle I told the girls that our goal was to shut them out the rest of the quarter and keep working. It led to some easy baskets and allowed us to work smarter offensively.”
WMU was led by Kyndal Townsley with 13 points and Jobey Malone with 10. Gutierrez paced the Ravens with 14. With the win, WMU is now 4-4 on the year and takes on WACO Saturday. The Ravens go into the holiday break 1-7.
In the boys game, Hillcrest got back to .500 on the season with a 59-45 victory. After WMU scored four in the first minute of the game, the Ravens closed the first quarter on a 15-1 run to take a 10 point advantage into the second. In the second quarter Daunte Oepping got hot for the Wolves, scoring 10 in the frame to keep pace with the Ravens balanced scoring. Hillcrest led 30-24 at the break. In the third quarter the Ravens took the control of the game, pushing their lead to 18 at one point during the frame as they opened the second half with a 9-0 run. Hillcrest head coach Dwight Gingerich talked after the game about his team’s night. “I thought defensively we were pretty good in the first quarter. Things looked good in the third also, defensively we tightened up. Noah Miller looked good defensively working against Gerot. We didn’t finish as well as we might have liked but it’s a good win over a team that has been playing well. Great to see London Schrock get 12 rebounds off the bench, Luke Schrock got extended minutes, John Hughes finished in double figures again, Eli Ours was solid and consistent. Defensively he played well against Oepping.”
The Ravens were led by three players in double figures with Eli Ours at 14, John Hughes with 13 and 11 for Kobe Borntrager. Oepping finished with 14 for the Wolves and Christian Gerot 11. With the win the Ravens enter Christmas at 3-3 on the year, the Wolves fall to 2-4 with a date against arch rival WACO on Saturday.