The Hillsboro basketball teams remained unbeaten after their home-court debut Tuesday against Halstead. The girls prevailed by a score of 47-20 while the boys outlasted the Dragons in a defensive battle, 46-34.
?GIRLS — The Trojans made up for a super-slow start with super-good third quarter en route to what became a lopsided victory.
Hillsboro appeared sluggish and uninspired in the first quarter. Darcy Hein?richs hit an early free-throw but it took nearly 4 minutes before Addie Lackey scored the Trojans? first field goal. Even so, Hillsboro led 3-2. Alex Ratzlaff caught fire down the stretch, scoring seven points, including back-to-back steals for baskets in the final two minutes.
With a 12-2 lead by the end of the quarter, Danae Bina hit the first two baskets of the second quarter for a 16-2 spread. But by the end of the quarter, the Dragons actually outscored Hillsboro during the period, 10-8.
It was a different Trojan team that came out after halftime. Keying off their defensive pressure that forced 11 Halstead turnovers, Hillsboro?s transition game fueled a 22-2 death blow on the Dragons? hopes. Lackey threw in 11 points during the run and Ratzlaff seven.
The fourth quarter was mostly a fait accompli. The Trojans toyed with kicking in the running clock, but never hit the 30-point margin. Coach Nathan Hiebert cleared his bench for the final 3 minutes as his No. 1 ranked team cruised to the 47-20 victory.
?BOYS — After three strong shooting performances at the Moundridge tournament last week, the Trojans found themselves mired in a defensive battle with Halstead made the game a ragged back-and-forth effort offensively.
With Christian Ratzlaff scoring the team?s last six points, Hillsboro staked a 15-11 lead by the end of the first quarter. After going more than 4:30 of the second quarter with a score, Ratzlaff stepped up again, this time hitting a three-pointer followed by a pair of free throws to give the Trojans a 20-15 lead. Ratzlaff scored again with 49 seconds left in the half, then fed Avery Franz an assist for one more basket in the final two seconds. Hillsboro led 24-17 at intermission.
It seemed like neither team was going to score as the fourth quarter began. Hillsboro missed its first six field goal attempts before Micah Allen scored on a baseline drive with 2:44 to play. Fortunately for the Trojans, the Dragons made only one of their first nine shots, so Hillsboro was still comfortably ahead at 38-28. Hillsboro had a chance to expand the margin in the final 1:30 but missed three consecutive front-end free-throws in a one-and-one situation. Jesse Brown finally broke the streak when he made both ends of a double bonus with 23.1 seconds ;eft. Jordan Faul capped the scoring with a layup off a steal with 5 seconds left.
Christian Ratzlaff led all scorers with 15 points. He added 10 rebounds for a double-double as Hillsboro improved to 4-0.
Halstead?s primary scorer Anthony Santiago, who came in averaging around 30 points per game, managed only 10 against the defense of Brett Weinbrenner and Evan Ollenburger.
NEXT — Hillsboro will complete its pre-holiday schedule with a road game at Lyons on Friday.