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Mid-Prairie basketball starts strong against Benton
Golden Hawks boys and girls teams pick up wins
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WELLMAN — Mid-Prairie girls basketball began the Jenny Hobbs era in the win column. The Golden Hawks alum and first-year coach guided her team to a 57-33 win over Benton on Monday.
The Golden Hawks shrugged off small runs by Benton at the start of the first and third quarters in their first win of the season. A Brooklyn Schneider 3 gave Mid-Prairie a 15-12 lead after one. An and-1 by Bobcats star Aubrey Kelly tied the game at 12 after Mid-Prairie got off to a 10-5 start.
Hobbs helped her team find some composure on the bench before they took the floor for the second quarter. It translated as Mid-Prairie pressed the Bobcats and played excellent man-to-man defense to force five misses and two turnovers in the first four minutes.
“We’re super athletic,” Hobbs said. “So if we can get our press going, that will drive how the whole game goes. So, that’s what I was most happy about. We knew we weren’t playing at the level we should’ve, and we picked it up.”
Jovi Evans scored six points off Benton’s misses and giveaways. Tessa Bombei added bucket to put Mid-Prairie up 23-12. The Golden Hawks outscored the Bobcats 30-10 over the next two quarters.
Benton trimmed Mid-Prairie’s lead to 10 with a 6-0 run in the first three minutes of the third, but Mid-Prairie held the Bobcats to just two points for the rest of the period. Mid-Prairie constantly looked for run outs in transition and tallied 11 steals as a team.
“It was a lot of fun,” senior Harper Pacha said. “It was just really fast and I like playing fast because we can get it up the court and the defense was nowhere to be seen. We can just run really fast and it’s just fun to watch because it gets everyone going.”
Four Golden Hawks finished in double figures led by Bombei’s 11 points. Jovi Evans had a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds.
Morgyn Bender and Jeorgia Evans also scored 10 apiece. Schneider finished with eight points and Pacha added four off the bench.
The Golden Hawks boys' team also picked up a victory over Benton on Monday with a 69-40 drubbing in their opening game of the season. Unlike the Bobcats girls' team, there was little hope for the Benton boys after one quarter of play.
Benton was hounded by Mid-Prairie’s press and coughed the ball up 15 times. That helped the Golden Hawks get off to a 22-2 start. They went on a 10-0 run to start the second quarter.
“A lot of that was just hard, relentless defense led to easy offense, and that’s something that we preach is to get stops, run in transition, get the easy look,” Mid-Prairie coach Daren Lambert said. “We had 12 guys score tonight, 12 of the 14. So a lot of confidence in those guys and guys doing it in different ways whether it was getting to the rim or getting outside shots.”
The Golden Hawks continued to make Benton pay for mistakes. One of their main avenues was lethal shooting from 3. Mid-Prairie connected on 8 of 16 shots from beyond the arc.
Four of the Golden Hawks’ five starters finished in double figures. Hudson Ehrenfelt led the way with 13 points and added two rebounds, four assists and a steal.
Brooks Weber and Bryce Henry each scored 11 points. Henry had a double-double with 10 rebounds and led the team with three steals.
“I felt like we were all trying to get to the rim early and that was huge,” Ehrenfelt said. “Because once you get to the rim, they start sagging off and then you drive and you kick out and that opens up shots for your teammates.”
Carson Humphrey chipped in 10 points. Clayton Davidson scored six and added two rebounds and an assist off the bench.
The Mid-Prairie boys and girls teams will look to improve to 2-0 with a road battle against Camanche on Friday. The girls game will tip off at 6:15 p.m. with the boys game scheduled to start at 7:45 at Camanche High School.
