YATES CENTER — Ben Cook was cooking early, while Gavin Busteed busted things open late for Yates Center High Wednesday.
The Wildcat freshmen played critical roles, first as Yates Center built a sizable lead, and then ended things emphatically after visiting Chetopa sliced a 21-point margin to five late in the third quarter.
By the end of the night, Cook had scored 17 points and Busteed 13 as Yates Center brought home a 68-47 victory to lift the team to 2-5 with a lengthy stretch of road games approaching.
“Early in the game, it helped that we knocked down 3-point shots,” Wildcat head coach Lane Huffman said. “It overshadowed the fact we weren’t playing good defense. This was probably the worst defense we played all year. We just didn’t stay in front of anybody.
“On a positive note, I’m gonna credit that to two days of no practice,” he continued. “Maybe we didn’t have our legs underneath us.”
Wednesday’s contest almost was a no-go as well, after wintry weather forced officials to postpone the game from Tuesday.
Leery of pushing the game back to later in the season, school leaders were able to secure officials to play on Wednesday — a rarity for high school sports — to get the game in promptly.
“Last year, we had the same thing happen with Chetopa,” Huffman said. “We pushed that game off to February and wound up not getting to play it at all. I’m glad we were able to get it in.”
And despite not getting to practice at all this week, Yates Center was hot early.
Cook and senior Blake Cuppy combined to hit six 3-pointers in the first period. Both connected twice from downtown as part of an 18-7 run to end the quarter, pushing the Wildcats on top, 24-13.
A lengthy scoring drought from Chetopa, spanning nearly eight minutes of game time, allowed the Wildcats to stretch the lead to 21 on Evan McVey’s 3-pointer with 35 seconds left in the half.
The lead was still at 40-20 midway through the third quarter before Chetopa roared back into contention. The Hornets’ Lawrence Holt and Harrison Carter combined to score 13 points as part of a 15-1 Chetopa run, making it 41-35 with about 90 seconds left in the third quarter.
“We got sped up and we started to turn the ball over too much,” Huffman said.
Busteed took things from there.
He scored on a putback on Yates Center’s next possession, drained an open 3-pointer with 30 seconds left in the quarter and then stole a bad pass for an open layup to make it 48-35.
