Lady Hawks clip Eureka in OT
Without a doubt, it’s been a good season in Thompson Falls basketball circles this year.
Both the boys and girls teams are in the thick of the Western 7B conference chases with one weekend to go.
And both currently sit in second place behind the league leaders.
So when the dust settled from this past week’s games, it was no big surprise to see the top two seeds in both girls and boys standings were intact.
Both the Blue Hawks and Lady Hawks were coming off big wins earlier in the week over Sanders County rival Plains boys and girls teams.
Saturday, Thompson Falls teams hosted Eureka for a pair of games with lofty conference seeds in the balance.
The Lady Hawks opened the show Saturday night with a nail-biter of an overtime win over the Lady Lions from Eureka, the team they are technically tied with for second place in the girls 7B race.
T Falls won the game 60-50 in overtime, leaving both teams with a 6-2 conference record and two games remaining in the regular season. However, both of Eureka’s conference losses were to Thompson Falls, giving the Lady Hawks the head-to-head tie-breaker in the event they finish the season with two losses each.
The Lady Hawks’ two losses have been at the hands of once beaten Mission, whose only conference loss was to Eureka.
This Saturday’s contest, on the surface at least, did little to untangle the situation standings wise.
The Thompson Falls boys, meanwhile, had their hands full with boys conference leader Eureka (8-0 in league games), who left town with a convincing 64-36 win that kept their seat, and seed, atop the 7B intact.
The Lady Hawks began the game Saturday by jumping out to a 15-5 first quarter lead over Eureka. That lead grew to 31-15 at the half as the Lady Hawks balanced scoring attack and aggressive defense kept Eureka off balance throughout the first half.
But the Lady Lions were not done and proved that by outscoring T Falls 24-12 in the fourth quarter to tie the game at 50-50 and send the two teams into an overtime period.
Thompson Falls took control of the extra time, shutting down the Lady Lions and outscoring them 10-0 to secure the win.
Lady Hawks 5-10 sophomore forward Gabbi Hannum scored a game-high 19 points for the home girls, who also got 13 points from sophomore guard Solveig Nygaard.
Kara Stanger topped the Lady Lions with 17 points.
Earlier in the day, Eureka’s boys clawed their way to a 14-8 first quarter edge over the Blue Hawks behind a solid offensive show by senior forward Parker Bates, who ended up as the game’s leading scorer with 23 points.
Eureka then outscored T Falls 13-9 in the second quarter, boosting their lead to 27-17 at the half.
The Lions kept up the pressure throughout the second half, out-pointing the home team 37-19 on their way to the lopsided win that left them in charge of the conference’s number one seed in the District tournament, which runs February 16-17 in St. Ignatius.
Bryson LeCoure led the Blue Hawks in scoring with 15 points to go with his team high seven rebounds.
The Lions had a 30-24 rebounding edge for the game, including 23 offensive rebounds. Eureka improved to 13-4 on the year with the win.
Both T Falls teams have two regular season games remaining, beginning with road games this Thursday in Troy. The Hawks and Lady Hawks return to their home court this Saturday (Feb 10) for their season finale versus Superior.