Photo Courtesy of Jeff Yoder
The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk boys basketball team scored a quality win in their final outing of the regular season Tuesday, toppling Fairfield in overtime at Tim Grady Gymnasium 80-73. The Golden Hawks sprinted out of the start, scoring the first 10 points of the game and led 15-14 after one. A late Mid-Prairie run in the second period and seven first half threes gave the Hawks a 38-31 lead going to half. Fairfield rallied in the third and things were back and forth the rest of the way, with the contest tied at 48 going to the fourth. The Golden Hawks went eight of nine at the line down the stretch of regulation, including a pair of Camron Pickard free throws in the final 15 seconds to tie the game at 67 before the Trojans missed on a shot to win the game at the buzzer and sent things to overtime. Early in OT, Trojan star Max Weaton was whistled for his fifth foul. From there, the Hawks went to work. Outscoring Fairfield 13-6 in the final three and a half minutes including six from Beau Flynn and pulled away for the win. After the game, Mid-Prairie players Pickard and Brady Weber joined the KCII postgame show to talk about the team’s hot shooting night and what it took to get the win. Pickard said, “I feel like the looks have been there this season, we just haven’t shot well and have been in a slump, especially these last five or six games. We’re finally starting to figure things out, settle into our rhythms and shots and it’s a good time to do that. You can see how much we’ve matured and we handled the pressure well. We didn’t panic. We just kept playing our game. We emphasized toughness. Everybody rebounded, played hard, played defense and played as a unit.”
Weber added, “Our first couple looks came from getting it in the paint. It feels good to see the ball go in and once it did, I feel like it was contagious and everybody just picked up from there. Coach Lambert just kept saying ‘We gotta finish, we gotta finish’ and we said ‘alright, we’re in this thing, we’re going to get this ‘W’.”
Mid-Prairie shot 46% from the floor and hit 11 threes as a team. They were also 12 of 15 in crunch time at the free throw line, grabbed 34 rebounds and dished out 18 assists. Pickard led the way with 25 points, Weber had 20 and Alex Bean 13. Weaton led Fairfield with 22 points. The Golden Hawks close the regular season at 11-10 and gear up for a playoff game in Wellman Monday against West Liberty.