Mid-Prairie rolls Lady Hawks in regional

WELLMAN — The scoreboard could have looked better, Taylor Hickey said.
Hickey’s Central Lee girls basketball team was only down 10 at halftime to Mid-Prairie in Saturday’s Class 3A Region 4 quarterfinal, but the coach knew the Hawks had left some points out there.
And then the third quarter happened.
Mid-Prairie doubled its points output from the first half, taking off for a 77-41 win at Tim Grady Gymnasium.
The Golden Hawks (16-5) play at Williamsburg (21-2) in Wednesday’s semifinal.
Central Lee finished the season 11-12.
The Hawks took advantage of Mid-Prairie’s first-half foul trouble to trail 26-16 at halftime, but Hickey knew her team missed eight free throws in the half.
“There's a 10-point difference at halftime,” Hickey said. “If you look at the scoreboard and you see 26-24, it’s a different feeling than 26-16. I let them go out and shoot around for about four minutes, before halftime ended, and I saw it in their faces when we did our last huddle. I saw they were sunken in. They didn't have the intensity as much as they did when we went to start the game.”

It took the Hawks 72 seconds to cut Mid-Prairie’s lead to eight points on Lizzy Mason’s layup, then the Golden Hawks took over. They scored eight points in less than a minute, starting a 26-12 run to end the quarter, a stretch that included a 14-2 outburst.
“We got a good score right away, but the wheels just fell off from there,” Hickey said.
Central Lee challenged Mid-Prairie throughout the first half. The Golden Hawks opened the game with an 11-2 run, but the Hawks rallied to keep the game in single digits for most of the quarter. Their attacking had Mid-Prairie racking up the fouls, but the free-throw misses were costly.
“They were in foul trouble, but I’ve been saying all year, it comes down to making your shots,” Hickey said. “I mean, we played some really good defense, coming up with some great steals, and then we turned the ball over, we’d miss a shot, and they'd come down and bury one.”
Taylor Jones led Central Lee with 10 points. Mason had nine. Kenna Sandoval had eight, and Ellie Lake had six.
Brylee Gearhart led Mid-Prairie with 18 points. Morgyn Bender had 16 points.
Central Lee, which loses seniors Lake, Sydnie Larson and Reegyn Scott, won nine games in SEISC South Division play, tying with Holy Trinity for third place.
“We were 6-16 last season, and that was a horrible feeling,” Hickey said. “And we finished 11-12 this season, which was a better feeling as a coach, but it’s still not where I want us to be. We have to work hard in the offseason, and that’s what I told them after the game. It’s the only way we’ll get better.”