BURLINGTON — A third-place finish is never the Mustangs’ goal when they begin a tournament, but knowing that the Burlington Invitational was so loaded this season that the seventh-place game featured Burlington and Prairie View — two top-ten ranked squads — made settling for a 49-43 victory over Sabetha in the third-place game a little easier to swallow.
“The kids took a really big step up that toughness ladder,” Iola coach Jay Applegate said. “We are not at the top yet, but we gained a lot of toughness tonight, especially mentally.”
In its loss on Friday to Independence, Iola got guards established early and leaned on them for offense, but on Saturday they flipped that script and attacked a bigger Sabetha lineup by feeding forwards Ethan Holloway and Evan Sigg and letting their superior quickness frustrate the Sabetha bigs.
“We knew we had a challenge, but we also knew we just need to be tough,” Sigg said.
Holloway got going early and finished with 17 points.
“When I go against guys that are bigger, I think it is a littler easier to move around them, because their feet drag a little more than some other guys,” Holloway said.
With the game tied, at 42-42 and 2:21 left in the game, establishing the big guys paid off for Iola’s top sharp-shooter. Isaiah Fawson was able to hit a three-ball to get Iola back in front and then Sigg and Holloway took over again.
On a drive from Sabetha’s Christian Meyer with five seconds left and the Bluejays down two, Holloway kept perfect defensive positioning on the help defense and Meyer missed a circus attempt.
Sigg grabbed the rebound and was fouled with three seconds left and had the chance to seal the game at the foul line.
Sigg — who finished with 11 points — made the first to make it a three-point game, but he missed the second.
Applegate had instructed the Mustangs not to foul on the rebound, so everyone except Holloway and Sigg were on the opposite end of the court. As the shot went up Holloway just put his hands in the air so the officials could see he wasn’t fouling, but Sigg didn’t want to leave the game to chance.
“In my mind, I thought it was going in so I started to back up and then it came back at me so I was like ‘Oh God,’ and I felt I had the game on me so I didn’t want to miss it,” Sigg said.
The junior out-rebounded four Bluejays and grabbed the ball, as Sabetha fouled him again, he flipped a layup attempt up.
That shot went in and Iola was allowed to breath a sigh of relief.
Sigg converted the ‘and-one’ and Iola left Burlington with a trophy.
“We put our big-boy shoes on and stepped up,” Applegate said.
BOX SCORE
Iola 49, Sabetha 43
Iola 13 13 10 13 – 49
Sabetha 10 9 15 9 – 31
Iola (7-4)
(2pt/3pt-FTM-FTA-Points) Ben Cooper 2/1-0-3-7; Isaiah Fawson 1/2-2-2-10; Braden Plumlee 1/0-0-0-2; Chase Regehr 1/0-0-2-2; Ethan Holloway 7/0-3-3-17; Evan Sigg 3/0-5-7-11. TOTALS: 15/3-10-17-49. FOULED OUT: None.
Sabetha (5-6)
(2pt/3pt-FTM-FTA-Points) Christian Meyer 0/1-4-5-7; Brett Stallbaumer 0/0-0-2-0; Keegan Cox 1/1-0-1-5; Jesse Burger 0/0-0-1-0; Joe Gruber 1/0-2-2-4; Kyle Grimm 6/0-0-5-12; Eric Renyer7/0-1-3-15. TOTALS: 15/2-7-20-43. FOULED OUT: None.
