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By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
One is from a rural town of about 400. The other is the largest high school in a city of more than 160,000.
Friday’s contest between Skyline and Springfield Kickapoo was a study in contrast. Skyline, the Class 2 school with 150 students, and Kickapoo, the Class 5 school with nearly 1,500.
Kickapoo, the top seed in the Gold Division of the 74th Annual Blue & Gold Tournament and Skyline, the eighth seed.
David versus Goliath.
But Skyline didn’t look out of place on the court at JQH Arena Friday night, where the Tigers forced Kickapoo to play a full 32 minutes to earn a 67-56 victory in second round action.
“That’s kind of what this tournament is about, what Blue and Gold is about, it’s about your smaller class schools playing your bigger class schools,” said Kickapoo coach Mitch McHenry. “I thought our guys did a good job. I thought we battled. We could have executed a little bit better but Skyline had a lot to do with that.”
The Chiefs, 5-2, advanced to Saturday’s Gold Division semifinals, where they’ll face Republic at 7 p.m.
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE GAME
Kickapoo’s junior standout Anton Brookshire poured in 21 points in the winning effort and made five three-pointers. He scored eight points in the first quarter but the Chiefs still trailed the Tigers 16-15 after the first eight minutes.
The game was tied at 18 early in the second when Kickapoo scored seven straight with a three pointer by junior Cameron Liggins, free throws by senior Cary Ragan and a field goal from senior Elijah Bridgers.
That was part of a larger 18-8 run to finish the half, with Brookshire making two free throws and Liggins scoring with 1:05 left to give Kickapoo a 36-26 lead.
“It starts with getting stops,” McHenry said. “When we were able to string some stops together now we get to run off a miss and run in transition. We’ve got kids who can shoot the ball and attack in space. When we get a stop it gives our guards a lot more space to operate heading downhill and we weren’t getting any stops early in the game. They were getting a lot of layups, uncontested stuff, so when we were stringing together some stops we were able to make a little bit of a run on them.”
Kickapoo still led by 10 at the 5:16 mark of the third quarter following a Brookshire basket, but Skyline wouldn’t go away.
The Tigers cut it to five with scores from sophomore Kourt Cheek and a free throw from sophomore Jaytin DeFreece.
DeFreece later grabbed his own miss and scored and he added a free throw with 1:53 left in the third to keep the Tigers within six points at the start of the fourth quarter.
But with 5:44 remaining Kickapoo extended its lead to 14. Brookshire made a pair of three pointers and a Ragan three-point play made it 56-42.
Still, Skyline hung around. The Tigers got the game back to single digits in the final minute when DeFreece made two free throws. That came after sophomore Lawson Beem made a deep three pointer.
It was too little, too late, though, for Skyline.
“We’ve got to continue to improve,” McHenry said. “We have a 14-point lead and we need to get that thing up to 20 points and finish instead of letting it get back down to nine points and single digits. That’s something we can improve on but for the most part we did a good job and we’re in a position we wanted to be in going into this tournament.”
Brookshire was one of four Chiefs in double figures. Liggins scored 15, Bridgers scored 12 and Ragan finished with 10.
“Our guards had a lot of assists, we got out and ran,” McHenry said. “We missed some layups I think we can make. We missed some perimeter shots we can make that would have added to the total. Cam Liggins had 15 points and played really well and Elijah Bridgers, our other guard, did a good job facilitating and attacking downhill. It was definitely a group effort.”
Skyline was led by Beem’s 15 points. Junior Bradyn Porter added 12 and DeFreece scored 10.
