Atchison County Community High School came out firing on all cylinders Saturday and it was much to the misfortune of Jefferson County North as the Tigers took home a 71-38 win in the title game of the McLouth Invitational Tournament.
ACCHS had advanced to the title game with double-digit victories over Valley Falls and Cair Paravel while JCN had made it an all-acronym final with a narrow win over Maranatha and then an 18-point win over Bishop Seabury in the varsity boys’ tourney.
The first quarter would set the tone for the game as the Tigers’ offense and misfiring North offense all but put the game out of reach. Two 3-pointers by ACCHS sophomore Austin Eckert gave the Tigers a 6-0 lead and forced North’s first timeout with 5:32 to play in the quarter. North sophomore Dominic Kingman got the Chargers on the board shortly thereafter but it would be North’s only score of the quarter. Eckert added two more 3-pointers before the dust settled on the quarter with an 18-2 Tigers lead.
Eckert answered a score by North sophomore Billy Noll with another 3-pointer to start the second quarter and ACCHS picked up where it left off after the first quarter. The lead reached 20 points a couple minutes of game time later and the Tigers finished the half on a 12-3 run to take a 39-10 lead into halftime.
A North comeback was highly improbable at that point, but the Chargers scored the first 4 points of the second half before the ACCHS offense kicked back into gear to stretch the lead to 34 at 50-16 midway through the quarter. The lead was 36 going into the fourth quarter as Tigers coach John Wetig cleared his bench for the fourth quarter as ACCHS won, 71-38.
After the early onslaught, Eckert, who was later named tourney most valuable player, finished with 17 points as he only scored 2 in the second half. Junior Ryan Martin also led the way for the Tigers with 19 points and 5 rebounds.
North was led by 10 points from junior Jeff Hale. Kingman scored 8 points and junior Spencer Wentz pulled down 8 rebounds in the loss. Both teams had 27 rebounds while North had 21 turnovers to only 14 for ACCHS.
JCN coach Jim Brickell said the result wasn’t what his team had hoped for after good wins in the quarterfinals and semifinals. One key blow to the Chargers’ chances came when sophomore Dalton Minor suffered a leg injury in the win over Bishop Seabury.
“It was a good week,” Brickell said. “We just didn’t come to play tonight, and they did. I thought it’d be a ball game, but we didn’t do what I had planned to do. We wanted to shut (Martin and Eckert) off, and obviously that didn’t happen. And we didn’t do our offensive game plan either. We’ve got to learn to be a lot more patient and not take so many treys. Things just snowballed on us tonight. But I give credit to them, Effingham played a heck of a ball game. We don’t see quality basketball teams like that enough. You learn a whole different kind of basketball playing good teams. ACCHS played hard and we got outhustled. Usually the team that hustles harder gets the win.”
Valley Falls fifth,
Oskaloosa seventh
The best any other county team could do after JCN’s second place finish was fifth, and Valley Falls got the job done with a double-digit win over Maranatha.
The Dragons had defeated county rival Oskaloosa in Friday’s consolation semifinals while Maranatha defeated McLouth to move into the fifth-place game.
Maranatha actually took early control of the game with a 5-0 lead before Valley Falls surged back with a 9-2 run to end the quarter. Senior Mitchell Streeter nailed a 3-pointer to cut the lead to 1 and senior Chase Lederer and junior Brooks Glassel scored the last 4 points of the quarter to give the Dragons a 12-9 lead.
The Dragons stretched the lead to 6 at halftime and then scored the first 6 points of the second half to extend the lead to 12 at 26-14. The lead held at 32-22 entering the final quarter.
Maranatha was able to get back within 7 points in the early fourth quarter but Glassel hit a 3-pointer to stretch it back to a 10-point Dragon lead. That was as close as Maranatha would get as the Dragons finished off the 43-31 victory.
Nottingham scored 15 points and Glassel scored 12 for the Dragons in the win. Valley Falls improved to 5-6 with the win.
After falling in the consolation semis Friday, Oskaloosa and McLouth were left to duel for seventh place on Saturday and the Bears came away with a 41-35 win.
Oskaloosa was led by 14 points from junior Adam Bowser while McLouth was led by 10 points each from junior Trevor Roberts and sophomore Gavin Swearngin. Oskaloosa improved to 6-5 while McLouth fell to 2-11.
In Saturday’s other game, Bishop Seabury defeated Cair Paravel, 61-46, for third place.
