The WACO Warrior boys and girls basketball teams continued their terrific campaigns Thursday with a pair of road wins over the Hillcrest Academy Ravens at Hillcrest Union in Kalona. The WACO girls were a 66-36 winner. The Warriors won each of the first two periods by matching 18-8 scores to take a 36-16 lead into half. WACO continued to extend their lead after break, outscoring the Ravens 30-20 after intermission. After the game, WACO head coach Lisa Graber talked about the keys to victory and individual standouts. “We feel comfortable with whoever gets the rebound to turn and push the ball up the floor, and we have people capable of running the floor. If we make those connections, I think those are nice scenarios where we can get some easy buckets. (Ellah Kissell) is really athletic and she did a really nice job tonight just finishing. She didn’t have a three, she can do that too, but, tonight one of our goals was that we weren’t going to live and die by the three point line. We were going to run the floor. We have to keep pushing ourselves that way, and then finishing at the bucket. Grace (Coble) I know had some of those and then Katie (Leichty). They just run the floor and play well together there. We just wanted to see if we could accomplish those things and I think we could see that in the scoring category.”
WACO won the turnover battle 20-7 and outrebounded Hillcrest by two. Ella Kissell continued her incredible scoring string this season with a game high 30 points to lead a trio for WACO in double figures with Grace Coble putting up 15 and Katie Leichty 12. Claire Withrow continued her impressive offensive second half of the year with a 22 point night that included six threes. With the win, WACO moves to 11-2 on the year and 8-1 in league play. Hillcrest is 0-13 overall.
In a highly anticipated boys matchup, the Warriors took the air out of the gym early and finished strong in a 65-46 win over the Ravens. WACO started the game on a blistering 23-5 run that spanned the entire first quarter. They took a 37-15 lead into half. The Ravens won the second half 31-26, but couldn’t dig themselves out of the deep early hole. After the game, Warrior head boys coach Paul Kissell talked with KCII Sports about his team’s impressive start and standouts. “We all have confidence in our abilities to shoot and score. We really lean on Hunter Hughes to start the game and then the rest of the offense kind of feeds off him. We’re trying to get Cody Graber more involved inside, he’s such a long presence in there. Simeon Reichenbach coming off his knee injury keeps gaining confidence every game. He had 19 the other night. Odee Shtefanchuk is a nice, confident player coming off the bench and he had 16 against New London. Then you have the Oswald brothers, Isaac had 11 against New London and had a solid game for us tonight. Reece coming off the bench can take it to the basket. There’s a lot of options. That just allows us to spread teams out. You can’t sag off of any of our players. It’s really nice to have as a coach!”
WACO outrebounded the Ravens by seven and won the turnover battle 15-9. Hunter Hughes led the Warrior effort with 21 points, 15 in the first half. Mason Miller got to double figures with 10 as nine Warriors scored in the game. Hillcrest was led by 17 points from Seth Ours, that included five long balls. Grant Bender got to double figures with 11. The win keeps WACO perfect at 12-0 on the year, while the Ravens fall to 7-5 with the loss.