Photo Courtesy of Mid-Prairie Social Media

Saturday night, there was no drama, and no doubt. The No. 2 ranked Mid-Prairie Golden Hawks systematically took apart the Northeast Goose Lake Rebels in a class 2A substate final 73-42, much to the delight of a partisan Golden Hawk crowd at Muscatine High School. When these two teams met in Goose Lake in December, Mid-Prairie needed overtime to escape with a 60-55 win. Saturday, they would never trail. They scored the games first seven points and stretched the lead to 19-7 late in the first quarter on a Carter Harmsen tip in that moved him to third on the all-time Mid-Prairie scoring list past 1971 grad Steve Mast. With a 19-12 advantage after the first quarter, the Hawks used a 15-4 second quarter sprint to build a 38-19 lead at the break.

Out of half, the Hawks continued to pour it on. The Golden Hawks reigned long balls on the Rebels all night, no one more than Will Cavanagh, who after burning Northeast with five three’s in their regular season meeting, drilled six Saturday, including three in the third frame as the Hawks hit five total in the third period and 11 for the game. The Golden Hawk lead would extend to 33 in the fourth quarter. After the game, Cavanagh, a senior, talked about the hot shooting from him and his team and the victory. “I’m glad both times (in games against Northeast) cause I think it helped us win both times. I’m glad I was able to have it tonight. We wanted to get out quick. In a game like this it’s easy to tighten up and not score as much. We focused on getting it done on the defensive end so that we could get it done on the offensive end. Once we started scoring a little bit that helped us settle in and I think that’s what got us going all night. We were playing with a great set of fans here, it was a packed house for us. You just get all of that energy from them and it really helps out. I was a little nervous coming in. I’m just glad I was able to get it done. It felt good. I have to give credit to my dad for the confidence. Carter (Harmsen) and Ethan (Kos) have been great inside all year, so that kind of sucks the defense in. Jack (Pennington) gave me a bunch of passes tonight that were great. I have to give all the credit to everybody else because they’re the ones that set me up.”

Cavanagh led Mid-Prairie with 23 points. Harmsen joined him in double figures with 17, 15 in the first half, and Ethan Kos ended with 10. Nine different Golden Hawks scored. Five different Mid-Prairie players hit threes. The win gives Mid-Prairie the program’s eighth trip to the state tournament all-time and their first since 2010. It extends the school record winning streak for the Golden Hawks to 24 games as they improve to 24-0. In the 2A state tournament bracket released by the state over the weekend, the Golden Hawks are the three seed and will have a state quarterfinal rematch with Monticello who was a winner over Williamsburg in substate Saturday. The Hawks beat the Panthers to win the River Valley Conference title outright 65-50 in Wellman on February 11th. You can hear all of the Mid-Prairie state tournament action live on AM and FM KCII next week.