The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk boys and girls basketball teams flexed their muscles Saturday sweeping a doubleheader against visiting Anamosa. The girls final was 65-20. The Hawks led 21-9 after one and 37-15 at half. Mid-Prairie outscored Anamosa 28-5 after half including a fourth quarter shut out of the Blue Raiders. Golden Hawk head coach Danny Hershberger talked in the postgame show about who and what stood out to him in the win. “We were able to get some offense from our defense tonight. We want to limit our turnovers and do what we can to be active defensively to force the other team into tough situations. It was important to limit them to one shot by getting a rebound. Amara Jones and Maddie Nonnenmann have become our leaders on offense. Amara (Jones), does such a good job of turning defensive plays into offense for us and she knocked down some big threes early. Maddie (Nonnenmann) had a really strong second half for us. Nora Pennington was excellent defensively.”
Mid-Prairie came up with 22 steals and forced 32 turnovers in the victory, Amara Jones and Maddie Nonnenmann each put up 20 points. The Hawks moved to 6-4 with the win.
The boys game was more of the same with Mid-Prairie running away from the past paced Raiders 67-31. They led 25-9 after one and 47-19 at half. The Hawks outscored Anamosa 20-12 after the break. After the game, head coach Daren Lambert talked about the victory. “We made great decisions on the offensive end and backed it up with defensive stops. Took care of the basketball, took good shots and they were falling. You get a score, a stop and then another score you can really start to stretch a lead. That was our message, start fast, send the message that things were going to be difficult on Anamosa as soon as they walked in the gym. It’s a team effort. Ethan (Kos) and Carter (Harmsen) did a great job defensively on Sam Wilt. He scored 47 in a game earlier this week. It was not going to be that easy on him today. We had a lot of assists, getting those guys into the right spots. Overall, great team basketball tonight.”
The Hawks had 15 assists, 15 steals and forced 20 Raider turnovers. Carter Harmsen led the way with 22 points, Ethan Kos added 14 and Alex Bean 13. Mid-Prairie was 10-0 after the victory.