PIASA - Ben Lowis was able to say something that just about every athlete who consistently plays against the Carrollton Hawks longs to say.
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“It’s my first time beating Carrollton,” Lowis said with a smile.”
The three-year starting senior forward tallied 23 points and 12 rebounds and made 9-of-10 shots as the Piasa Southwestern Birds earned a convincing 68-51 victory over the young Carrollton Hawks in Piasa on Tuesday night. The Birds now go to 4-1 while the Hawks drop their first game of the season.
“Carrollton and Southwestern games have been kind of a rivalry game early in the season, and we got a lot of respect for what they do. Our kids wanna beat Carrollton, that’s for sure,” Southwestern head coach Jason Darr said. “We were pretty fortunate to play the way we did and come out with a win.”
Southwestern was led by their senior quartet of Lowis, Justin Bailey, Caleb Robinson, and Caden Heyen. Bailey poured in 19 points and drained four triples. Heyen scored 11 points and collected six assists and six rebounds. Robinson contributed with 10 points.
“We’ve been shooting really good this season. Hopefully, we can keep it up,” Lowis said. “We have three three-year starters, we’re very experienced, and that helps a lot. Colin [Baumgartner] helped me last year, and now I have a lot more responsibility along with Caleb.”
“[Ben’s] huge for our team. “He doesn’t always get the points that he wants, but he does everything else for our team. He’s the one kid that takes care of all the little things for us and the big things like rebounding, and tonight he ends up being our leading scorer. A lot of that was off of rebounds and putbacks,” Darr said. He’s a great athlete and a great kid. We really appreciate everything he does because he’s a team player.”
Carrollton began a new era last night with the first career game for head coach Matt Goetten, and at the same time they have a completely different team with inexperience, but full of potential. The Hawks showed plenty flashes of that, but couldn’t do it enough against a Southwestern team who were four games into the season and has plenty of experience.
“It’s our first game. We had a game plan that took us so long to execute, and I give Southwestern credit,” Goetten said. “I told the guys you’re playing a veteran Southwestern team who could shoot the ball, we had a game plan for that, and it took us a long time to grind into it. I’m happy with how we responded, and we learned a lot about our team tonight. We gotta go back to the drawing board, fix some things, and we were stagnant on offense. I’ve never seen us stagnate like the way we did on offense tonight. I take responsibility for the loss.”
Just over two weeks removed from playing Tuscola in the quarterfinals of the playoffs in football, Hunter Flowers showed that he has plenty ability to dominate on the hardwood. The six-foot-two sophomore scored 17 points in his starting debut, including knocking down two three-pointers and blowing by defenders to convert on layups.
“Hunter’s upside is something that should frighten everybody in the WIVC,” Goetten said. “He did some things tonight that I simply haven’t seen in practice. When the game’s on the line, Hunter does stuff like that. You saw that in football.”
Junior Nathan Walker scored 14 points, and classmate Gabe Jones buried two triples and tallied 10 points for Carrollton.
“They’re long, big, and got some good young players,” Darr pointed out.”
Carrollton led briefly 6-5, but Southwestern took the lead for good on a three-pointer by Bailey, which was one of three straight the Birds made to get out to a 14-8 lead. They finished out on a 12-4 run to end the first quarter ahead of Carrollton 17-10.
The Birds steadily upped the score to 34-23 going into halftime and came out hitting on all cylinders by building up to their biggest lead at 44-25 with 5:34 to go in the third quarter. If the Birds weren’t hitting their long-range shots, then they were getting plenty of second-chance opportunities with offensive rebounds.
“We’re not very big, and if we don’t box out and use good technique then we’re not going to get a lot of rebounds, “Darr said. “We spent tons of practice time going over and making sure we have the right mentality to be a rebounding team.”
Soon after the Hawks put together a 6-0 run, but their momentum hit a wall when Gabe Jones was whistled for an over the back foul and then hit with a technical foul. Before the play, he had three fouls but picked up numbers four and five, thus was finished for the night.
Southwestern built another 19-point lead in the fourth quarter at 57-38, but the Hawks would go on an 11-1 run fueled by Flowers, Walker, and an Ethan Brannan three-pointer to cut the deficit back to single digits at 58-49. However, the Birds responded by breaking Carrollton’s full-court press multiple times and made enough free throws to silence the Hawks for good.
“We don’t have any quit in us, and I’m happy with the way our guys responded. It would’ve been easy once Gabe goes out of the game, who’s arguably our best player,” Goetten said. “Our bench is deeper than I thought coming into tonight. That was a nice surprise they didn’t seem frustrated by the bright lights. They came out here and gave me a good effort.”
