By Denise Tucker (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
FAIR GROVE – The highly anticipated district championship rematch between the top-seeded Sparta Trojans and No. 2 Strafford Indians lived up to the hype Friday night as the Trojans battled to an 82-77 Class 3 District 11 championship victory in front of a packed house at Fair Grove High School.
Strafford knocked off Sparta 56-45 to claim the district title in 2022, and then defeated the Trojans 61-59 this season to win the Strafford Invitational on Dec. 3. Sparta was able to avenge both of those losses with Friday’s district championship.
“They’re warriors,” Sparta coach Deric Link said of his team. “They’ve been working for this for three years, and some of them have worked for four years. They’ve been dreaming about it since they were kids. They just battle, and they just believe in each other so much and just try to do their job the best they can.”
Sparked by Jacob Lafferty’s 11 first-quarter points that included a couple of “statement” dunks, the Trojans used an 8-0 run to pull ahead 15-14, before Cody Voysey’s free throw tied the game just before the end of the quarter.
Both teams struggled out of the gate in the second quarter before Sparta caught fire and closed out the quarter on an 11-0 run for a 32-21 advantage going into halftime. Lafferty almost equaled Strafford’s output by himself with 20 points in the first half.
“He’s a special kid; he’s a competitor,” Link said of Lafferty. “He’s wanted this really bad and we’ve talked about this since he was a freshman. He’s worked for three years, just getting better and better and better every day. He’s a kid who loves the work that it takes to be good.”
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The Trojans stayed hot in the third. A putback by Walker Loveland and a 3-pointer by Steven Brown from the top of the key opened up a 16-point lead for Sparta. The Trojans outscored the Indians 10-5 (eight of those points on free throws), which gave them their biggest lead of the game – 47-26 – with just under 3 minutes to go in the third.
The teams traded free throws before Voysey and all-state guard AK Rael each knocked down 3-pointers to close the gap to 53-38 going into the fourth quarter.
And it wasn’t a matter of if the Indians were going to mount a comeback, it was when were they going to do it.
Voysey banked in a 3-pointer to open the fourth quarter, as Strafford continued to chip away at Sparta’s lead (53-41). The Trojans would add to and maintain their double-digit lead, but the Indians wouldn’t go away. An 8-0 run midway through the fourth, capped by the first of Braden Willard’s five 3-pointers, pulled Strafford to within eight (63-55).
Following a putback by Rael, it was a foul fest resulting in trips to the free-throw line for both teams and a 69-58 Sparta lead. Willard hit another 3 to cut it to eight points.
And though he had missed some free throws earlier in the game, Walker Loveland hit four straight to build back the cushion for the Trojans – and they would need it.
“I didn’t realize how much adrenaline was going through my system, and so I kept shooting them too hard,” Loveland said. “And then once I finally adjusted how I needed to shoot it, I kind of honed in on them a little bit.”
Strafford trailed by nine points (79-70) with 29 seconds left in the game and outscored Sparta 10-1, including back-to-back 3s by Willard, to make it 80-77 with 1.5 seconds to go. Loveland left no doubt by sinking his first free throw (81-77) and “unintentionally” hitting the second to end the game.
This type of game wasn’t new territory for the Trojans, Loveland said.
“It took us coming together and using the experience we’ve had in past championship games (to win),” Loveland said. “We’ve been in like five or six, including last year, and we just haven’t been able to pull through and win one, and so we knew what we needed to do. We’ve been in that situation before. We have also been in this situation of being up by 20 or something like that, and the team coming back. So, we knew it wasn’t over yet, but we needed to come together and pull through.”
That’s where a championship mindset comes into play, Link said.
“Being a champion starts in your mind and we had to do a good job of staying mentally locked in and focused on making free throws and rebounding; just continue to make it as tough as possible, and not let things add up,” Link said. “It could have gone a lot worse than it did.
“It’s always the monkey you got to get off your back is beating Strafford. The tradition, the culture… Coach (Tyler) Ryerson, Coach (Mike) Wilson, on down the line; coaches that have just built that thing the way it is. They’ve done a lot of really good things in the last… forever, it seems like, and you know you’re going to have to beat them to move on.”
Ryerson said the game resembled how his team’s season went – a good start, struggles throughout, but fight to the finish.
“Huge credit to our guys,” Ryerson said. “They were about as tired as they could be and they’re still rotating the trap and trying to get steals on no legs at all. We made some shots in the fourth quarter to get it close.
“I’m really proud of our kids but hats off to Sparta – they did a great job.”
Rael, who suffered an ankle injury in Wednesday’s semifinal, fought through the pain to score 17 points, including the 1,000th point of his career on a free throw late in the third quarter.
“To come back 48 hours later and play most of the game extremely injured just says so much about AK as a kid,” Ryerson said. “He’s a warrior. For four years, he’s played for us and just been a phenomenal basketball player. He’s missed a bunch of time with injuries but has been one of the best to come through Strafford. He needed (eight points to hit 1,000), so I’m proud of him for that. As many games as he has missed throughout his career with injuries… for him to get that award was pretty cool.”
For Sparta, the regular season has seen the Trojans play and defeat larger-class schools, including upset wins over Ozark and Bolivar in the Blue and Gold Tournament. Those experiences have helped them get to this point.
“Playing in three tournament championships – we lost all three – but that’s probably why we won this one,” said Lafferty, who led all scorers with 33 points. “We learned what we did wrong in those (games) and we put them into this one (so we’ll) play better.
“It was a win-or-go-home (tonight). I’ve been playing with these guys my whole life, since fifth grade. It was one of those deals if we lose it’s going to be really sad, so I just came out here to try to play the best I possibly could, and it showed out.”
Next up for the Trojans is Southwest (Washburn), a 56-42 winner over Stockton, in the sectional round on Monday.
“It’s a new game,” Loveland said of the team’s mindset. “Celebrate for 24 hours and then after that, forget about this and let’s focus on who we’ve got next and take it one game at a time.”
NO. 1 SPARTA 82, NO. 2 STRAFFORD 77
Class 3 District 11 Championship
STRAFFORD 15-6-17-39—77
SPARTA 15-17-21-29—82
STRAFFORD (15-11) – Brody McNew 4, AK Rael 17, Cody Voysey 21, Isaac Berg 9, Elliott Goings 5, Jourdyn Edelstein 5, Braden Willard 15, Ryder Ross 1.
SPARTA (22-5) – Walker Loveland 13, Kavan Walker 6, Steven Brown 7, Jacob Lafferty 33, Dexter Loveland 18, Mason Letterman 5.
Up next: Class 3 Sectional – Sparta vs. Southwest (Washburn), 7:45 p.m., Monday, Feb. 27 at Carthage High School
