RICHMOND — Things started rough and only got rougher for Iola High’s boys Saturday.
The Mustangs struggled with pretty much everything they tried against Santa Fe Trail, and never could get on track in a 56-31 loss in the championship game of the Ike Cearfoss Memorial Tournament.
“We didn’t do anything well enough to win this basketball game,” head coach Luke Bycroft said. “We didn’t shoot the ball well enough,we didn’t stop them, and we didn’t rebound.”
A pair of Charger 3-pointers to end the first quarter snapped a 10-10 deadlock and set the tone for the rest of the game.
Bycroft noted Iola was able to run its offense well enough in the early going to get open looks at the basket, but few of those shots, aside from a pair of Matthew Beckmon 3-pointers, connected.
“The guys got frustrated, thinking they had to do something differently, and they started pressing,” he said.
Santa Fe Trail’s Jalen Smith opened the second quarter with six straight points before the Mustangs’ Cortland Carson hit a short jumper to snap what had been a 12-0 Charger run.
But Smith responded with another putback to trigger another Santa Fe Trail rally. The Chargers’ Rigley Sleichter put in a layup at the halftime buzzer to extend the lead to 33-17.
The second half didn’t get much better. Carson scored for the first bucket before Santa Fe Trail erased any hopes of an Iola comeback with a 13-1 run.
If there was any silver lining for the Mustang faithful, it came from the play of guards Nick Bauer and Austin Crooks down the stretch. The duo accounted for all of Iola’s 11 fourth-quarter points. Bauer added a pair of steals during the stretch.
Beckmon led the Mustangs with three 3-pointers for nine points. Crooks scored seven.
Carson, who averaged 32.5 points a game over Iola’s first three contests, was limited to five against a Charger defense that targeted him for much of the game with a box-and-1 strategy.
“We got what we expected,” Bycroft said. “We hoped to get a bucket or two out of it to loosen them up, and we got other guys in places they needed to be, but we couldn’t score out of it.”
Carson led the team with two assists. Bauer, Grady Dougherty and Beckmon each had two steals. Dougherty and Tre Wilson each record five rebounds.
Smith paced Santa Fe Trail with 20 points. Layton Lind added 15 and Vaughn Decker scored nine.
