12-8 record sets school record
Sports editor
Julia Zeiner, Kayley Heerey, and Lindsay Hett each scored in double figures Tuesday to help Marion High School knock off Smoky Valley, 61-53.
The pesky Lady Vikings led Marion at halftime, 31-28, and 42-37 at the end of the third quarter.
However, a Heerey jumper with 4:49 left in the game gave MHS a lead it would never relinquish.
The victory gives Marion a 12-8, the best it has had during its five-year run in the Mid-Central Activities Association.
It also made for a three-way tie in its sub-state with Halstead and Remington.
The three schools are battling for the third, fourth, and fifth seeds.
A coin flip today (Wednesday) will determine where each team will play.
Marion defeated Halstead during the season, while Halstead and Remington split a pair of games.
Since no team beat the other two schools, a three-way tie-breaker will take place.
Despite losing to Marion, Halstead still could finish ahead of Marion.
The loser of the coin flip will become the fifth seed and have to travel for its first-round game.
The three and four seeds will stay at home.
The semifinals and championship games will be at Marion later in the week.
Hillsboro
Dakota Kaufman scored a career-high 30 points Friday to go along with 16 rebounds and four assists, leading Hillsboro to a 45-37 defeat of Marion.
The junior accounted for 66.7 percent of the team’s scoring, and 53.3 percent of its rebounds.
MHS actually led at the end of the first quarter, 10-7, and 14-9 early in the second, before Kaufman scored eight straight points to give HHS the lead for good.
A 20-8 second quarter gave Hillsboro a 27-18 lead in going into halftime, as Kaufman contributed 17 points.
An Allie Faul three-pointer early in the fourth quarter gave Hillsboro its largest lead, 15, but then Hett caught fire.
The junior, who was held scoreless in the first half, had all of her team-high 13 points in the second half.
During a two-minute stretch late in the final quarter, Hett hit on back-to-back threes to cut the lead to 43-37 with two minutes to play in the game.
However, two Faul free throws would be the only points scored the rest of the way as Hillsboro ended Marion’s four-game winning streak.
The Warriors averaged 66 points per game during the win streak.
Zeiner chipped in with 12 points and seven rebounds, and Whitney Gordon had six points and seven boards for Marion.
Faul was the only other Trojan to make more than one basket, finishing with 11 points on 3-of-7 shooting behind the arc.