For one half Thursday night, the West Prairie/Southeastern Cyclones appeared to be on the verge of one of their biggest victories of a record-setting season.
But Lewistown had other ideas and shut down the WP/ SE offense in the second half to earn a 53-25 victory in Colchester.
It was Senior Night as head coach Grant Bland started all three of his seniors, Madelynn Sullivan, Maicyn Shipman and Melodee Ford in the regular season finale against the visiting Indians who entered the contest with a 17-12 record.
Lewistown started the game with a 7-0 run before Shipman got the Cyclones on the scoreboard with a basket at the 3:27 mark.
That started WP/SE on a 10-0 run that included consecutive treys by Sullivan and freshman Alyvia Barkley as the Cyclones would end up with a 10-9 lead after one period.
The Indians got back-to-back three-pointers from Carsyn Braun and Vanessa Yurkovich to start the second quarter. But WP/SE stayed close and used a 7-0 spurt midway through the quarter, capped by another trey from Sullivan, to lead 19-15 with 2:28 left in the first half.
That’s when Lewistown began to take charge. The Indians scored the last 12 points of the half, including a long buzzer-beating three-pointer by Joley McLaughlin, in grabbing a 27-19 advantage at halftime.
Lewistown scored the first seven points of the third quarter to up its lead to 34-19 with just under five minutes to go in the period.
West Prairie/Southeastern was held to only two points, both free throws in the period, as the Indians led 40-21 going into the fourth quarter.
Sullivan hit another three-pointer with 3:35 left to break the field goal drought, but WP/SE would get no closer as Lewistown held the Cyclones to only one free throw the rest of the way.
Bland tried to regroup his team at halftime and was pleased with their performance to start the contest.
“We talked about how that was really a solid half of basketball,” said Bland who has led this team to a school-record 16 wins. “I was very proud of them because I knew coming in that this was a good team. (Lewistown) have some really quality wins on their schedule and they’re always fundamentally sound and play defense well.”
“McLaughlin’s a good ballplayer and I thought we did a pretty good job of taking her out of the picture in the first half,” Bland continued. “Then over the last two minutes where we had a couple of poor passes and then some missed shots on our end, that really kind of killed it for us and we never got over the hump.”
Sullivan, who has led the team in scoring this season, finished with 10 points, including three treys. to pace the WP/SE offense.
Others in the scoring column were Barkley with seven points, Shipman and Josie Hodges had three points each, while Emily Martin finished with two for the Cyclones who dropped to 16-15 overall.
McLaughlin and Braun led Lewistown (18-12) with 12 points apiece.
Lewistown made it a clean sweep for the night as the Lady Indians’ JV squad handed West Prairie/Southeastern a 39-11 loss.
Braelyn Reeves had three points for the Cyclones while Chloe Cutsinger, Josie Hodges, Kenda Nelson and Addy Stanberry each finished with two points apiece.
