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CARROLLTON - Carrollton Hawks head coach Matt Goetten couldn’t have been more pleased with how his team came to play on defense after struggling all season of consistently bringing it.
The defense was there against the Barry Western Wildcats, but the offensive execution wasn’t enough. After leading for the majority of the game and holding to a 32-29 lead heading into the fourth quarter, the Hawks foul trouble caught up to them, which allowed Western to take control and outscore Carrollton 26-15 and ultimately held on for a 55-47 victory in the Class 1A Carrollton Regional Semifinals on Wednesday night.
“We were locked in defensively. I did feel we were locked in as well as we’d been all season, but the ball wouldn’t go in the basket. We needed to hit more shots.” Goetten said. “ That was the challenge to the guys. If you’re locked in defensively, you can win tonight, and I thought they did enough to do that. The guys followed the gameplan to a T. Both teams played hard. Western’s won as many games as they’ve won for a reason and that’s a nice team.” It just wasn’t in the cards tonight.”
Carrollton’s season ends for the second consecutive season in the regional semifinals and finishes the year at 14-18.
Western, a 3-seed in the Okawville Sectional, improves to 19-9 and advances to the regional finals where they’ll take on the 2-seed Jacksonville Routt Rockets on Friday at 7 p.m.
The Wildcats were led by Kyle Colgrove’s 21 points, with 14 coming in the second half. Preston Wellman added 12, and Tristan Rueb chipped in seven.
While the Hawks forced 20 turnovers and limited Colgrove in the first half, they were able to create gobs of open three-pointers. However, they drained four all the while turning the ball over 20 times themselves.
Offensively, senior Gabe Jones gave it his all. He scored a game-high 23 points in his last ever game and was six points shy of notching 1,000 in his career.
“I’m proud of everyone for giving 100 percent,” Jones said. “I think we played the best we could’ve played tonight. It was a good defensive effort on both ends. It was an off-night for me shooting, and I don’t have a game to bounce back now, but it happens. We just came up a little short.”
Fellow senior, Nathan Walker followed behind Jones in the scoring department with ten but was a physical presence defensively.
“I couldn’t ask for a better game from those two seniors,” Goetten said about Jones and Walker.
“Nate locked in defensively early on and that set the tone for the night. Anything we get out of Nate offensively is gravy. He rebounded the ball well, he had active hands and blanketed [Colgrove] in the first half,” Goetten said. “Gabe did everything he could do offensively. I feel for him being [6] points short, but as I told him 1,000 is just a number. He scored 994, and no one can take that away from him. [Gabe] had a great two-year career with us.”
Western led 4-2, but then Carrollton would edge out in front for the majority of the game. They went on a 7-0 capped by an Ethan Brannan triple to take a five-point advantage, which was a lead they garnered four times, but never could expand.
The Hawks led 20-15, but a basket by Rueb cut the Carrollton lead to 20-17 at halftime.
Both teams complemented each other well defensively as they were physical and quick to react, which made scoring hard to come early on, even when there were good looks at the basket.
“We have a tendency to turn it over unforced,” Goetten said. “We didn’t have a lot of live balls, and we didn’t force a lot. That’s where we kind of make our living in the transition game. I thought our defensive intensity bothered them. [Western’s] very fundamentally sound. We knew that coming in. A lot of shot fakes. We didn’t bite on many of those.”
In the first six minutes of the third quarter, the fouls piled up against the Hawks, which for a moment was a lopsided 8-0. The Wildcats would ultimately capitalize on their free throws while taking 29 trips to the line compared to the Hawks eight.
Carrollton led 26-21, but Western would go on an 8-0 to take their first lead since early in the first quarter off a basket by Colgrove, who missed a hefty amount of the first half due to foul trouble.
The Hawks led 34-31 early in the fourth, but back-to-back field goals by Wellman and another bucket by Colgrove gave the Wildcats a 37-34 lead. Jones wouldn’t let Carrollton and his last ever game go down without a fight.
He drained back-to-back three-pointers to tie the game 42 and then sank another basket to level the score again at 44. The Wildcats took the lead for good off a short-range basket by Wellman that kick-started a 7-0 run.
Although the season didn’t end how he had hoped for, Jones still looks back on his basketball career as a positive to persevere through adversity and how he grew as a leader.
“I’ve learned a lot about being a leader on the team and just life in general,” Jones said. “I’m really thankful for the last two years I’ve spent playing here, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
