Mt. Pleasant basketball splits on senior night

MT. PLEASANT — Benton Community made the trip down to Mt. Pleasant on Monday night, as the Panthers hosted senior night festivities in a non-conference doubleheader. The boys’ team blasted the Bobcats 65-35. The girls fell to the No. 4 (3A) Lady Bobcats 51-34.

The Panther boys didn’t get out to the hottest of starts, going down 11-6 before a pair of Carter Amos free throws cut the deficit to 11-8 at the end of the first quarter. After the first buzzer, however, it was all Mt. Pleasant.

“We kind of came out flat a little bit,” said Amos. “We decided we needed to pick it up and just get after it.”

And get after it they did. The Panthers dominated the second quarter, outscoring Benton 20-7 in the period, thanks in large part to a 14-point fourth by Payton Hagans. Hagans had 16 at the break, and Mt. Pleasant enjoyed a 28-18 advantage.

The Panthers never let up in the third quarter. Mt. Pleasant started the period on an 11-0 run, led by Hagans, who scored 10 more points in the third quarter. At the end of three, Mt. Pleasant had full control, at 48-27.

Momentum never left the side of the Panthers, as Mt. Pleasant put on a show in the second half, which included an alley-oop dunk from Nate Stroud, and a couple of banked in 3-pointers by senior Cason Edwards in the closing minutes.

“It's a special group,” said Mt. Pleasant head coach Eric Rawson. “It was nice to get those guys out on the court all together, and it was a nice way to close out senior night.”

Hagans finished the game with 29 points to lead all scorers. Amos had eight. Aaiden Ashton finished with seven. Stroud and Edwards had six each. Noah Lange scored four. Owen Vansickel had three, and Tim Cam finished with two.

The Mt. Pleasant girls led the 14th-ranked Bobcats 1-0 after a Kate Schimmelpfennig free throw early on, but Benton took over after that and finished the first quarter on a 19-0 run.

Trailing 19-1 in the second, Mt. Pleasant began to claw back a bit. The Panthers scored 10 points in the second, six by Andrea Lopreato, but Benton still held a comfortable 28-11 lead at the half and led 43-22 after three quarters.

Benton was red-hot from the 3-point land, sinking 10 threes on the night, which proved to be too much for the Mt. Pleasant girls.

“They shoot the ball really well,” said Mt. Pleasant girls coach Curt Watson. “We knew they shoot a lot of threes, but I never dreamed they would shoot like they did tonight.”

Lopreato scored 17 points in the loss. Schimelpfennig wound up with five. Alex Scott and Andi Scott both scored four. Addison Peck and Abby Carthey each finished with two.

After the game, Coach Watson said his Panthers (2-4, 1-1) have to sharpen up before Friday, when they travel to play first-place Washington (4-1, 2-0) in a Southeast Conference showdown.

“I told them, we have to finish this year strong,” Watson said. “We have three games left, and it's not going to be a cakewalk playing the Demons on Friday night.”

And speaking of facing the Demons, the boys’ game in Mt. Pleasant will have major implications, as the Panther boys (3-2, 2-0) will play Washington (2-2, 2-0) with first place in the conference on the line.

“We've just got to play as hard as we did tonight in the last three quarters,” said Amos. “The place is going to be booming. It's Washington, so it's a big conference game, and we're hopefully going to get a win.”

Both the girls’ game in Washington and the boys’ game in Mt. Pleasant will have start times of 7:30 p.m. The girls will be preceded by a junior varsity game, and the boys will be preceded by both a freshman and JV contest.