Charleston takes care of its business

3A-4 BOYS CHARLESTON 61, HACKETT 40

HACKETT — Conference championship and top seed in the district tournament firmly in hand, the Charleston Tigers had to overcome a sluggish stretch on Friday night.

They did and finally put away a 61-40 win over Hackett to remain undefeated on the road.

The Tigers wrap up a sixgame, nine-day stretch with its final 3A-4 game on Saturday at Cossatot River already knowing they have a bye into the semifinals on Thursday and a regional berth wrapped up.

“It’s real nice,” Charleston coach B.J. Ross said. “It takes a lot of the stress off the kids and allowed us to play some kids that haven’t got a lot of minutes. It also allowed for a couple of ours to not have a very good game, that haven’t had one like that in a while. It was good for them to let some of the kids come in a play.”

Friday, Charleston (12-3, 12-1) led 20-13 after a quarter, but the two teams combined for just two points apiece in the first four minutes of the second quarter.

Only a layup by Brandon Scott for Charleston and two free throws by Eli Slaves for Hackett kept it from being a scoreless span by both teams.

Most of Hackett’s problems during the stretch were turnovers while Charleston was missing shots.

“We were in a good offensive rhythm early, and Reese Merechka, our point guard, got his second foul so we pulled him out,” Ross said. “We just went stagnant. They boxed-and-one Brandon, which everybody usually does, but we went stagnant. We put Reese back in with about 31/ minutes left, 2 and that’s when we had our run. He does a lot of things that aren’t in the scorebook and makes our offense go and makes it click.”

Hayden Foster drained a 3-pointer to get Hackett within, 22-18, with 3:13 left in the first half but Scott answered with a trey on Charleston’s possession that started the Tigers on a game-defining 11-0 run.

Brevyn Ketter hit two free throws, Merechka added a steal and a layup, Ketter added another layup off a feed from Scott, and Scott stroked a mid-range jumper to push Charleston up, 33-18 with 1:14 left in the half.

Slavens added a driving bucket to end the half for Hackett, and after Drake Dodson scored for Charleston, Slavens added two free throws, and Foster scored off a rebound that had Hackett within, 35-24.

Ketter scored inside, and Bryton Ketter and Scott hit consecutive 3- pointers as Charleston put its lead back to 43-24 with 2:02 left in the third quarter.

Charleston had secured the conference title with a 6259 win over Paris on Tuesday night but had to gut out the win on Friday.

“We had a good battle the other night, we haven’t had one in a while,” Ross said. “The kids need to understand that when things aren’t going well that we still play hard. We play extremely hard.”

Scott finished with 20 points for Charleston, and Merechka added 11.

Slavens had 22 points for Hackett (10-13, 5-9), which will play in the first round of the district tournament at Paris on Monday.