MORAN — After a thoroughgoing rout of the Northeast High School Vikings in the first half of Tuesday night’s game, the Marmaton Valley boys basketball team nearly gave their fans a conniption when they allowed the visiting Vikings to go on an 18-4 tear that evened the score at 30 points early in the fourth quarter.
The Wildcats’ impenetrable full-court press in the first 16 minutes of play — which netted them turnover after Viking turnover in the game’s early minutes — was reduced to Swiss cheese after the break. Shots that splashed through the net in the first half of the game, caromed off the back of the rim in the second. Passes went wide. Rebounding faltered. Momentum shifted from the Wildcats’ side of the ledger to the Vikings’, and desperation reigned.
With the score knotted at 30 — and the Vikings’ sails full-up of wind — the Wildcats at last found their rescue.
In this instance, Marmaton Valley’s armored knight was a slender, cherub-faced junior with a neat bowl haircut by the name of Gage Griffith.
Sensing his team’s collapse, Griffith appeared to enter into some fugue state, scoring rapidly and at will — a quick 3-pointer, a jumper in the lane, a putback, another midrange jumper, two free throws. Griffith deposited 11 of his 15 total points in the space of about three minutes.
Suddenly, as if the Vikings’ renaissance were but a dream, the team from Marmaton Valley was up 47-35, then 50-37, then 51-40.
And that was all she wrote. The Wildcats defeated the team from Northeast 52-40, and will face the Madison Bulldogs in the second round of the 2107 Marmaton Valley Preseason Tournament.
Senior Justice Pugh led MVHS in scoring with 16. Senior Josh Wise had 10 points. A third senior, Brock Hall, added 7. Junior Isaac Heskett rounded out the scoring with 4.
GIRLS GAME
The Northeast High School Vikings girls dispatched the Wildcats of Marmaton Valley by a final score of 58-18.
It wasn’t for lack of grit or due to insufficient hustle that the Marmaton Valley girls basketball team lost the opening game of their hometown tournament Tuesday night.
It was because they couldn’t hang on to the basketball.
An abundance of Wildcat turnovers on the night led to an abundance of easy, fastbreak points for the visiting Vikings.
Northeast, sensing that the Wildcat girls were helpless in their habit of telegraphing passes, began to stalk the passing lanes with the crouched stare of a fox in the henhouse, picking off one lethargic pass after another and converting them into layups on the opposite end.
The Wildcats are an excellent defensive team, who will be an excellent all-around team if they can find a way to improve their scoring as the season continues.
As it stands, the Wildcats only managed to score three points in the entire second half, compared to the Vikings’ 33.
Junior Patricia Outland led the Cats in scoring with 6. Freshman Kaylee Becker added four free throws and senior Isabelle Bigelow had 3 points on the night.
The Wildcats will face the Bulldogs from Madison in their second-round game on Thurday.
PHOTOS: At left, Marmaton Valley sophomore Bailey Griffith attempts a close-range shot among a mixed pack of Wildcats and Vikings. Fellow Cats Isabelle Bigelow, pictured left of Griffith, and Patricia Outlan, in back, clear a space for the shot. The girls lost to Northeast 58-18. Pictured at right is Marmaton Valley senior Justice Pugh, whose 16 points led the Wildcats to a 52-40 victory in the first round of the preseason tournament. REGISTER/RICK DANLEY
