By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
An hour before his Golden City basketball team prepared to practice on Thursday – the Eagles’ first time on a court in five days – head coach Michael Reeves got a phone call from Chadwick’s Shawn Guerin.
One day later, Guerin’s Cardinals made the 90-minute drive for a last-minute battle between two of the top teams in Class 1.
Tipping off just 22 hours before Golden City’s district opener on Saturday, it proved a beneficial tune-up for the Class 1 No. 7 Eagles, who scored 28 points in the fourth quarter to put away Class 1 No. 5 Chadwick 82-64.
“Having a week off before districts, I was ecstatic for it,” Reeves said “I thought we needed conditioning and I knew Chadwick would definitely give it to us and I knew they apply pressure that we won’t see the rest of the season so I thought it’d be real good for us.”
In a game that featured 40 free throws and even more turnovers, Golden City (19-5) seized control after the half but couldn’t shake off the Cardinals (21-3) until late.
The Eagles trailed most of the first quarter before taking a 17-16 lead by the end, and went into the half ahead 31-25.
That lead grew to double digits on a Chain Parrill basket with six minutes to play in the third. The senior scored 10 points in the quarter as Golden City built a lead of 13 points on two different occasions. Chadwick cut it to seven in the final minute but sophomore Josh Reeves swished a three pointer with five seconds on the clock to make it 54-44 with eight minutes left to play.
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It was still just a seven-point game, 56-49, with 6:23 left in the fourth quarter.
Two scores by senior Lane Dunlap and a third by Parrill got it back up to 13 in just 35 seconds, and the duo scored back-to-back again a couple minutes later to make it 70-54.
With 3:08 remaining, Reeves took a pass from senior Seth Miller, faked to his right and then drained another three pointer, putting the Eagles up by 17 and all but finishing off the Cardinals.
Parrill and Reeves made four-straight free throws in the final minutes to give Golden City its biggest lead of the night, 82-59.
“Our kids, you could tell in the third quarter we were getting a little bit mentally worn out,” Reeves said. “Chadwick really puts on the pressure. In the fourth quarter I was real proud of our kids. We got mentally tough and we started making crisp passes, finding the open spots and finding the open guy.”
If there was one point Guerin wanted to make after the game it was that his Cardinals didn’t play very well. He said so five different times.
“We didn’t play well tonight and Golden City did,” he said.
“We can’t turn the ball over, which we know that,” he said. “We’re 21-3 now, we know how to play but we just didn’t show up tonight. We just didn’t play well. We’ve got Billings tomorrow so hopefully we’ll do better then.”
Guerin added that Golden City was a “great team.”
Both teams had 20 attempts at the free throw line. Chadwick finished 12-for-20 and Golden City was 18-for-20. The Eagles were perfect in 13 attempts in the fourth quarter, with Dunlap making all seven of his.
He finished with a game-high 35 points, putting him over 600 for the season. He stands at 1,987 for his career. He was far from the only contributor for the Eagles on Friday, though. Parrill scored 24 and Reeves added 21. The trio scored all 28 of Golden City’s points in the fourth quarter.
“Once we bought in and found out that Chadwick can play, they know what they’re doing – once we figured out what they were going to do we finally picked up our game and played well,” Reeves said.
Chadwick was led by junior Paden Gilbert, who scored 26. Senior Calvin Rains added 18.
The Cardinals are the top seed in District 4 and will play on Feb. 23 against the winner of School of the Ozarks and Exeter. Golden City is the second seed in District 6 and opens against seventh seed Walnut Grove at 4 p.m. Saturday.
“We’ve had a week off and we needed to get our legs loose,” Reeves said. “I thought this would be a better practice than a regular practice so I was all for it.”
