Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tigers get huge road win
Bentonville may have turned its season around with Tuesday’s 61-47 victory at Springdale.
The road win came after the Tigers lost consecutive games to Fayetteville and Springdale Har-Ber, the top teams in the 6A-West Conference. A third consecutive loss would’ve continued a slide in the pecking order for Bentonville (13-11, 5-5) in the league standings.
“We are thrilled the way we came back and won at Springdale,” Bentonville Coach Dick Rippee said. “We’ve got some inexperience. But when we’re focused and locked in and not worried about making shots, we can be pretty good.”
Bentonville took control at the outset when the Tigers outscored Springdale 22-13 in the first quarter. Springdale (13-10, 6-4) crawled to within 43-35 late in the third quarter. But Bentonville pulled away again with an 11-2 surge that included consecutive threepointers by Owen Dehrmann and Ma’aiki Dauda, who scored 15 points each.
Elijah Wilhelm added 14 points and Jayvn Williams 11 for the Tigers.
“Springdale has some great athletes and our focal point was to be on the attack,” Rippee said. “We wanted to be aggressive and not passive.”
Tuesday’s win could serve as a springboard for Bentonville, which begins a four-game home stand tonight against Rogers Heritage. Bentonville will then face Bentonville West, Fort Smith Northside and Fayetteville at home before hitting the road again at Rogers on Feb. 16.
“We’ve earned the right for some home games after playing Fayetteville, HarBer and Springdale, the top teams in the league, on the road,” Rippee said. “We’re going to look at each game like we’re 0-0 and they’re 0-0. You can’t overlook anybody in this league because if you do, then what we did on Tuesday night will be flushed.” — Rick Fires
HUNTSVILLE BOYS
Eagles set for big game
Huntsville Coach River Gosvener said his team went through some struggles, but has recently turned things around ahead of a big 4A-1 Conference game tonight.
“We definitely went through a lull during the Christmas break and coming out of the break,” Gosvener said. “We had a couple injuries affected some guys. We weren’t playing the same basketball we had been, but we’re finally getting back to playing like we were.”
The Eagles (16-11, 5-6 4A-1) fell 64-51 at Shiloh Christian (6-5 in 4A-1) almost three weeks ago, but they’ll get another crack at the Saints tonight in a battle of teams right in the middle of the league standings.
Gosvener, a Huntsville alum in his third season as head coach, said there’s no question tonight is a big game. He noted in the first meeting 6-5 senior Kayden McCubbin played sparingly in the second half because of foul problems.
“I think we had the lead at the half and maybe down four at the quarter,” Gosvener said. “It got late and we just didn’t score well, and we had to foul a bunch trying to catch up and they made their free throws. The game was probably closer than the score showed just because we had to foul.”
Gosvener said the Eagles have a size advantage over Shiloh Christian, while the Saints are a better shooting team. A key tonight will be finishing at the basket inside.
“We missed a lot of easy ones against them the first time,” Gosvener said. “We’re real streaky shooting. We’ve just got to get more consistent.” — Paul Boyd
LINCOLN BOYS
Senior night set
Lincoln faces a pivotal matchup at home with Flippin tonight.
Not only is it senior night for Lincoln, the Wolves hope to hold court before ending 3A-1 Conference play at Elkins on Tuesday. Bergman leads the league, followed by Elkins in second place and Lincoln (20-7, 6-4) currently in third place.
“This is a big one for us because we’re fighting for third place and Valley Springs is a half-game behind us,” Lincoln Coach Josh Ferrell said. “Senior night can be a little bit of a distraction, but we’ve got to show up and be ready to play.”
Lincoln had a six-game winning streak going before losing back-to-back games to Bergman and Elkins. The Wolves will need another maximum effort tonight after beating Flippin 61-60 on a three-pointer by senior guard Paxton Price when the teams met on Jan. 11.
“They’re a solid team, a lot better than their record
PROVIDENCE ACADEMY GIRLS
Busy stretch
After Providence Academy won the Lady Blackhawk Holiday Invitational title on Dec. 29, the Lady Patriots went 20 days without playing another game.
Once the idle spell ended, Providence Academy has now played seven games over the past 13 days, including a 71-43 victory Wednesday over Lamar, Mo., during the Mercy Warrior Invitational in Joplin. The win puts the Lady Patriots into Saturday’s championship game against Aurora, Mo.
“It’s nice to be back into action,” Providence Coach Jeff Daniels said. “It’s now an interesting situation because of missing games because of the snow and ice. Now we have to get those makeup games in whenever we can.”
The Lady Patriots, however, have picked up right where they left off and won six of the seven games since they returned to action. That included Daniels’ 100th victory at the school last week with a 38-27 victory over Destiny Christian at Oklahoma City.
“We would just go live scrimmages during the layoff,” Daniels said. “But it’s hard to simulate what you would see in a game, so we would have situation scrimmages — like being down 3 with 1:30 remaining and down 1 with 45 seconds remaining. We were just trying to stay as sharp as possible.”
Providence still has another busy stretch on the horizon with six regularseason games over a nineday span after its game Saturday. — Henry Apple
KINGSTON GIRLS Wrap up league play
Kingston will try to complete an unblemished run through 1A-1 East Conference play tonight with a road game against Deer.
Regardless of the outcome, the Lady Yellowjackets (19-5, 11-0) will have the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, which takes place at Jasper. Kingston clinched the regular-season conference title last week with a 56-48 victory at home over Jasper.
“Getting those conference games over with is good because it leaves you some room for bad weather,” Kingston Coach Pat Summers said. “It’s not necessarily a strategic thing. You still want to play a couple of games before you start district tournament, which we do, but in the last few years it’s been dicey if you’ll get your conference games in.
“It’s nice to get it out of the way and know you’re finished. I think the standard that we have set is we work harder. I think we’ve wanted it more at times, and we never quit — whether we’re up or down.”
Following the game against Deer, Kingston will close out its regular season next week with nonconference games Tuesday against Eureka Springs and Friday against Yellville-Summit.
“The biggest problem we’ve run into is we’re a little bit younger,” Summers said. “I’ve only got two seniors, and we still make a lot of mental mistakes. We’re trying to get more focused and a little more disciplined. We’ve haven’t played our best basketball yet, and I think that’s a good thing. We haven’t quite got to the consistency to where we want to be.”