Photo Courtesy of MP Sports Social Media (Nicole Miller)

The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk boys basketball team started the postseason Tuesday with a 68-53 win over the visiting Cardinal Comets at Tim Grady Gymnasium in Wellman. Cardinal, despite ranking last in 2A in a handful of offensive categories, came out firing, knocking down four first quarter threes to build a six point lead before the Golden Hawks climbed on top with 20 straight points. Mid-Prairie would not give the lead back the rest of the night. The Hawks were up 21-14 after one and 37-23 at half. After Cardinal closed to within 11 in the third, Mid-Prairie scored nine straight to push the lead to 20, their largest of the night. The Comets cut things to 11 again in the final two minutes, but Mid-Prairie hit free throws to limit the drama and put the game away. The Golden Hawks hit eight threes, had 17 offensive rebounds, won the glass by 14 and the turnover battle 21 to 7. They were led by three in double figures, including Bryce Henry’s game high 21 points. Brady Weber had 18 and Ace Peck 16 points. Weber added six assists and five boards. He joined the KCII Postgame Show live to talk about the win. Weber said, “It was important tonight for me to drive gaps and kick to my teammates. That’s big, especially against a zone. Swing the ball fast, get it to the middle. I think if we can keep executing that, the shots will fall and we’ll be ready to go. We didn’t play very well on the defensive end tonight, but when we did focus, our press got a lot of steals. We got some easy run-out layups. I think it really just came down to our defense. When we locked in and played good defense, we got those big runs. We just had to keep the pedal to the medal keep going. It’s lose and you go home, so we knew we were going to see their best shot. We had to just come out and play hard.”

Cardinal got a season high 19 points from Alec Rachford. They end their season at 1-22. Mid-Prairie is now 12-9 and travels to Eddyville-Blakesburg Thursday for a District Semifinal with the Rockets. You can hear all of the action live on KCII starting at 6:30 Thursday night.