Photo Courtesy of Hudl
The Keota Eagle boys basketball team stood on business Monday night in an opening round Class 1A district win at home over Lone Tree 86-48. The Eagles opened on a 21-2 run that spanned most of the first quarter, taking a 21-8 lead to the second and 42-25 advantage into half. A 10-0 Eagle sprint in the third quarter helped stretch the lead to 66-41 going to the fourth and Keota finished with a 20-7 run in the final frame to put away the win. Keota connected on nine threes, won rebounding by 26, turnovers 20-13 and dished out 16 assists. Three Eagles ended with double doubles led by Billie Kindred’s 29 point 17 board monster night, during which he hit the 1,000 point milestone for his career. He joined the KCII postgame show live to talk about the team win, their play as a group, his night and the milestone.
Kindred said, “We came out with a good mindset tonight and played really intense defense. That led to a lot of fast breaks and easy layups to get us started. We shoot a lot of threes and get a lot of fast break layups, which come from our full-court press. We know that in every game if we win the rebounding battle that’s a huge advantage because it leads to more points for us. Seeing everyone on the team succeed is everything. You just want to see everyone succeed and get it done in the win column. At the end of the day that’s all that matters. (Scoring 1,000 points) feels good but the credit goes to my teammates because they’re the ones getting me the ball. I like knocking down threes, but if I can get the ball inside on a mis-match, that will work too!”
Chase Haifley doubled up with 20 points and 10 assists and Jace Chalupa completed the trio with 11 points and 14 boards. Lone Tree was led by 15 points from Emmett Burke and 10 for Dominic Garcia. With the win, the Eagles are 19-3 and advance to the second round of district play Thursday to meet Hillcrest Academy in Kalona, who was a 64-46 winner over Central City. Lone Tree completed the campaign at 7-14. The Lions say goodbye to seniors Lukas Fuhrmeister and Jack Patterson.