Photo Courtesy of Hillcrest Academy Yearbook

The Hillcrest Academy Raven boys basketball team turned in a workman-like performance, dispatching the visiting Wapello Indians in Monday’s opening round of the Class 1A District Tournament 58-47 at Hillcrest Union. A Raven run of 17-2 in the first quarter allowed Hillcrest to play from in front the rest of the night. The lead stood at 29-14 at intermission. Three three-pointers out of half, two from Lincoln Miller and one from Rowan Miller helped Hillcrest push the lead to as many as 20. Wapello made a late charge to cut the deficit to nine, but one more Raven run, this time 12-3, put an end to the comeback. Following the win, Hillcrest head coach Stephen Bender talked about the fast start and his team’s defense. “We had a nice start. We were doing really well defensively. It felt like even though we were scoring extending the lead, we weren’t very crisp offensively. You can’t complain because you have a nice run like that but it just felt like we weren’t clicking. A lot of that had to with how Wapello was playing. I thought it was really good (in the first half) to hold them to 14 points. We just have to play stronger. I thought it was a little more physical in the second half and we didn’t respond well to that. We tried to look for Lincoln (Miller) and he got a couple of threes to fall. Isaac (Birky) and Rowan (Miller) hit a three also. When teams try to play that way, you have to have guys step up and hit shots and we did.”

The Ravens won turnovers 17-8 and rebounding by 13. Individually, Kale Bailey paced Hillcrest with a game-high 24 points with seven boards. Rowan Miller had an 11 point, 10 assist double double. Wapello’s top number was 18 points, including four threes for Kinnick Richenberger. The loss ends the Indians season at 5-17. The win gives the Ravens a three-game season series sweep of Wapello, moves their record to 19-4 and sets up a District semifinal rematch with Keota Thursday night at Hillcrest Union on KCII.