Hawks knock off No. 6 HTC

DONNELLSON — Every first-year coach looks for that win, that victory that shows that the effort, the transition to something new, is working.
Jonny Swanson got that win on Friday night.
Central Lee’s 55-52 victory over No. 6 (Class 1A) Holy Trinity was a “statement win,” Swanson said.
Taking down a team that was in second place in the Southeast Iowa Super Conference South Division and was being considered one of the best teams in the state in its class certainly qualifies for the honor.
“I’ve been talking about it all year,” Swanson said. “That’s the position we want to put ourselves in against the Holy Trinitys, the Notre Dames, the West Burlingtons. We want to be in those games at the end.
“It was a gritty, tough win.”
Central Lee (5-5 overall, 4-4 South Division) scored just nine points in the fourth quarter, but six of those came in the final two minutes to clinch the win.
Will Hayes’ layup with 19 seconds left put the Hawks up 53-52, then Owen Swan’s two free throws with 1.2 seconds remaining provided the final margin.
Holy Trinity (7-2, 6-2), which had a nine-game winning streak in the series and had won 12 of the last 13 games against the Hawks, had a chance to tie the game, but Luke Hellige’s 3-pointer from midcourt missed.

Swanson had a sense that this kind of game was coming from his team.
“We had a really good couple days of practice leading up to this,” Swanson said.  “The energy when we have a team like that in practice is a little bit different. Like, they sense the magnitude of the game, and they bring it every day, and they want to win those games, right? And so I knew they were going to be locked in. I knew they were going to be locked in. I knew they were going to be focused. I knew they're going to bring energy and intensity, and, you know, the rest just kind of takes care of itself.”
Holy Trinity coach John Hellige got an opposite sense from his team.
“When you play teams like Central Lee, teams that are really up and coming, really looking for that signature victory, you’ve got to be laser focused,” Hellige said. “You’ve got to be sharp. And when you're not sharp in practice, and you go through the motions when you get to a game like this, when you try to play at their speed and their physicality, you know you're going to have mistakes, not going to finish things. And I think it's a good lesson for this team.”
Other than two ties in the first 90 seconds of the game, Central Lee led until the 5:29 mark of the fourth quarter, when a 3-point play by Luke Hellige gave Holy Trinity a 49-46 lead. But Central Lee’s Caden Swan tied the game with a 3-pointer on the next possession, just another answer on a night when the Hawks handled everything from the Crusaders.
“I thought we would get going,” John Hellige said of his team taking the lead. “We had some uncharacteristic turnovers and breakdowns there at the end that really bit us.”
“We were close at their place early on in the year (a 53-47 Holy Trinity win on December 3),” Swanson said. “And we kind of been talking all year like, hey, once we see some of these teams at home, with our atmosphere, we shoot the ball a little bit better, they shoot it a little bit worse, maybe things will really start to come together. This back half of the season we play eight or nine more games at home. We have a really good stretch at home.”
Swan led the Hawks with 19 points. Hayes had 13.
Luke Hellige led Holy Trinity with 27 points. Koby Jones added 12.