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By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Trailing by 5 with five-and-a-half minutes left to play, Kickapoo’s district title hopes hung in the balance.
But the top-seeded Lady Chiefs used an 8-0 run and some clutch free throw shooting to down second seed Nixa 55-52 on Friday night in the Class 6 District 5 girls basketball championship at Joplin.
“It was a fantastic win and credit to our team for hanging in and persevering whenever it got difficult because it didn’t look good and it’s going to be hard but you’re going to bend a lot, and we bent a lot, but we didn’t break and that’s a credit to our kids tonight,” Kickapoo coach Jim Pendergrass said.
It was the fifth straight district title for third-ranked Kickapoo, which finished third in Class 6 last year. And it was the second time this year the Chiefs defeated fourth-ranked Nixa by three points. They’ll move on to face Truman in the quarterfinal round at Bolivar.
But with 5:30 remaining in Friday’s game, Kickapoo (22-3) found itself trailing 45-40 after a rough start to the second half. The Chiefs turned it over on their first four possessions of the third quarter and trailed by as many as 7.
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Delainey Wylie grabbed an offensive rebound and scored with 5:10 remaining, then Kaya Goldsby scored at the 4:24 mark and Kya Johnson’s three-point play with 3:30 on the clock made it a 47-45 game. Goldsby added a free throw at the 1:28 mark.
“We finally started stopping them on defense and getting some rebounds,” Pendergrass said. “We went a while in the second half where they made it very difficult to guard.”
Nixa (24-5), which went five straight possessions without scoring, finally got two free throws from Macie Conway with 1:13 left, but Kickapoo made its next seven free throw attempts to seal it.
The Chiefs made 10-of-13 free throw attempts in the fourth quarter and 18-of-27 in the game.
“That’s really good for us because we’re usually a little over 50 percent,” Pendergrass said.
“We missed some shots and they made some shots,” Nixa coach Jenny Perryman said. “I think we got a little tense. You’ve got to make plays down the stretch. Our kids kept fighting. I’m so proud of them. You’ve got to hit shots at the end of the game and they did and we didn’t but we kept fighting and putting ourselves in good spots.”
Kickapoo scored the first eight points of the game and led 16-12 after a quarter and 24-23 at halftime. Both teams turned it over eight times in the first half.
But Nixa opened the third with an 8-0 run, thanks in part to those four Kickapoo turnovers, and the Eagles led 41-37 after three.
“We showed a lot of maturity at the time when it got very difficult,” Pendergrass said. “We really started doing a better job of executing offensively and defensively and getting scores and we got to the foul line a few times and got some stops when we absolutely had to have them. That’s what it’s going to take to win a close game.”
Goldsby led the Chiefs with 16 points, Johnson scored 11 and Bella Fontleroy added nine. Nixa’s Conway scored 16, Rhianna Gibbons had 14 and Lilly Mahy finished with nine.
