Photo Courtesy of Hillcrest Academy

The Hillcrest Academy girls basketball team saw their season draw to a close Thursday night in the first round of the Class 1A regional tournament, falling on the road to Montezuma 76-12. The Ravens grabbed an early 5-4 advantage on a Claire Withrow long ball in the first quarter, but then watched the Bravettes end the frame on an 20-1 run to lead 24-6 after the first and steamroll to a 22-4 run in the second to take a 46-10 advantage into the break. Montezuma didn’t let the Ravens up for air in the second half, shutting them out in the third period while putting together a 20-0 run and outscoring Hillcrest 30-2 in total after intermission. Following the tilt, Hillcrest head coach Mitchell Drey joined the KCII postgame show to talk about the season for his team. “The end of the season…the one thing that we have said all season is that we’re young, so they all know that we get to come back next year, but it’s still tough. We put a lot of time, blood, sweat, tears on the basketball court this season and you hate to have it go out the way that it did. The meaning that I gave them is that we get to bring back most of our team, now it just comes down to doing the hardest part of basketball and that’s putting in the work in the off-season. Talk about the ups and downs of the season, overall just try to keep everyone focused, but, it was not a happy-go-lucky kind of talk.”

The Bravettes outrebounded Hillcrest by 13 and won the turnover battle 20-6. Ten total Bravettes scored with Kallie Robison posting a game high 20 points. Ellen Cook and Shiressa Wetering each had 14. Hillcrest got six points from Withrow and five from Malia Yoder. The Ravens end their season at 0-20, but return the entire team next year. Monetzuma, now 19-3, advances to the regional quarterfinals to take on the winner of Lone Tree and Midland, which was postponed Thursday due to weather concerns.