By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
GOLDEN CITY – For the first time in 22 years the Golden City boys are conference champions.
For the first time ever they won’t have to share it with anyone.
The Eagles capped an unbeaten run through the Ozark 7 Conference with a 68-47 senior night win against Verona on Thursday night.
“It means a lot,” junior Lane Dunlap said. “I think it’s the first time in our school history to have the conference championship alone.”
Dunlap looked to the banners on the wall to be certain. There, in black lettering on a gold background, was proof: the Eagles were tri-champs of the Midwest Conference in 1998.
“Yeah, so it means a lot to be the first one to do it in our school history,” he continued.
“That’s been the only time,” head coach Michael Reeves later noted.
That banner won’t be lonely anymore. Golden City needed two overtimes to win 84-80 at Thomas Jefferson in late January. Every win since has been by double digits.
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The hometown fans expected nothing less on Thursday with a five-win Verona team in town to face the seventh-ranked team in Class 1. But for three quarters it looked like the Wildcats might hand them a major disappointment.
Verona had doubled up Golden City by the end of the first quarter and led 16-8. That lead grew to double digits in the second and the Wildcats took a 27-20 lead into halftime.
They led by as many as nine points in the third quarter and though the Eagles started chipping away, Verona always seemed to have an answer.
It was a 43-39 game with just more than eight minutes left to play, but the rest was all downhill for the Wildcats and Dunlap was a major reason why.
He scored 14 points in the first two quarters – a good half by any measure – and followed that up with a phenomenal second half in which he poured in 34 points and took control of the game, seemingly willing Golden City to victory singlehandedly at times.
He scored on six of seven possessions in the midst of a 17-2 run, and when he missed senior Arlo Stump was there to grab an offensive rebound and clean up.
Golden City scored 27 points in the third quarter alone – a pace for 108 in a full game – and outscored the Wildcats 29-4 in the final nine minutes.
“I saw that we were losing by a little bit and I can’t lose, I hate it,” Dunlap said.
He blamed the sluggish start on senior night festivities, an opinion shared by his coach.
“We got a talking to in the locker room (at halftime) and we came out to play,” Dunlap said.
“I’m not a big fan of the senior nights,” Reeves said. “You get out of your routine. We started the five seniors (Eliab Cifuentes, Ryan Sheets, Arlo Stump, Talon Besendorfer, Blake Taylor) and we normally don’t do that, it just knocks everybody out of their routine. You’ve got to give props to Verona, they came out ready to play. They wanted to ruin senior night for them. Luckily Lane got mad and then the rest of our team started following Lane.”
Verona coach Brad Stewart thought his team just ran out gas in the fourth quarter.
“We’re seven deep and one of them is out so we’re six deep and one of them is really playing on one leg,” he said. “We just don’t have the depth. We put out so much effort for three and a half quarters that we did run out of a little bit of gas.”
The Wildcats utilized a 1-3-1 zone defense to help keep Golden City in check and Stewart was pleased with the defensive effort.
“Gotta give credit to the Dunlap kid,” he said. “I mean he killed us, he just did. He was just the most aggressive person on the boards, made some big shots and got out in transition.”
“As far as individual performances that was the best we’ve seen this year, no doubt,” he said.
Reeves told Dunlap on Tuesday night during a road win at College Heights that it’s no coincidence the team’s big runs come when he’s scoring.
“He’s our second best player on the team behind Arlo and when Arlo’s having his off nights we can always rely on Lane,” he said. “He’s shooting 60-something percent from two. When he brings his energy the rest of the team feeds off that. Lane’s just one hell of a kid.”
Stump added 14 points for the Eagles.
Verona was led by sophomore Jaiden Carrasquillo, who scored 21 points.
Golden City has five days to relish its conference championship before it takes the floor against Sheldon in the Class 1 District 5 Tournament on Feb. 25.
“For me it’s all about the kids,” Reeves said. “That’s why I didn’t want to get in the pictures there at the end. To me they’re the ones that have busted their tails trying to get to this. They knew what the school history was. They had their first district banner in 15 years shown today. These kids have been working since they were in fifth grade trying to get to where they are now.”
