LA CROSSE – Heartbreaking.
That’s summed up the final seconds of the basketball season for The Prairie School boys basketball team. The Hawks didn’t just lose the state championship game on a last-second shot, they fell in a game that early on appeared theirs to win.
But sports, especially those played by high school kids, are unpredictable. Mistakes get magnified. The basket gets smaller. Stopping theopponent’s momentum becomes akin to stopping an avalanche.
Just like that a sure win became disappointing loss.
That was the story for Hawks in the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 4 state championship game at the La Crosse Center. They scored the first 15 points against Oshkosh Lourdes and led by 20 in the first half, but foul trouble and a scoring drought of almost 6½ minutes in the second half set the stage for a 43-41 loss Friday night.
Nathan Slagter,a 6-foot-4 senior forward,provided the dramatic ending, hitting the game-winner on a jump hook in the paint that was just out of the reach of The Prairie School senior Antuan Nesbitt.
“It’s a really unfortunate way to lose, but I couldn’t be more proud of our players,” Hawks coach Jason Atanasoff said.
The Prairie School finished 24-5and missed winning its first title. Nesbitt, 6-4 wing,finished with 12 points and eight rebounds. Junior guard Asanjai Hunter (11 points) and senior Kody Krekling (10) also scored in double digits for the team.
The loss snapped a seven-game winning streak for the Hawks in which they won six games by double digits to reach its first state final. Earlier Friday they never trailed on the way to a 61-46 win overOnalaska Luther.
They then had an eight-hour break before the final, about three hours longer than Lourdes, and early in the final The Prairie School was the sharper team, beating Lourdes off the dribble, beating it in transition and locking down on it with strong on-the-ball defense.
The Hawks hit five of their first eight shots on the way to their15-0 lead. They were shooting 50% (11 for 22) at the break. Lourdes, meanwhile, had hit 18.5% (5 for 27) of its shots with its top player, senior guardPreston Ruedinger, going 1 for 9 from the field for two points.
The tide, however, was quietly turning. The Prairie School was held scoreless for the final 3½ minutes of the half, a stretch Lourdes used to cut a 20-point to 27-12 at the half.
A disturbing trend was starting to unfold for Prairie. It wasn’t getting much scoring out of its offense. Thirteen of its first-half points were on fast breaks. When Lourdes started to do a better job of getting back Prairie’s needed to be sharper in the half court.
“I think we got a little dribble happy, which caused us to start ball watching quite a bit," Atanasoff said."We weren’t moving a ton off the ball. We weren’t setting good screens … it just got stale.
“We’ve had plenty of those moments in games, but we usually snap out of it. For whatever reason, credit Lourdes Academy, we weren’t able to do that tonight.”
Compounding the issue was foul trouble from the team’s two best players of the day: Nesbitt and Hunter.
The two led the team to its win in the semifinals and were off to a good start in the first of the final. In the second half the whistles caught up with them. Nesbitt picked up his second, third and fourth fouls during the first 9 minutes of the second half. Hunter, the primary defender on Ruedinger, also drew three fouls in the second half, leaving with four for the final 7 minutes 35 seconds.
Meanwhile, the Hawks' lead was dwindling. A three by senior guard Jack McKellips cut the lead to 10, 33-23, with 11:40 to play. A three-point play by Slagter made it a 33-26 game with 9:31 to go. A couple of free throws by Bauer 2 minutes later trimmed the lead to 33-30.
Ruedinger hit his only three of the night the next possession to tie the game with 6:19 to play.
“Our offense wasn’t clicking and it seemed like they couldn’t miss a shot,” Nesbitt said. “That’s hard to come back from. They came together as a team. We tried to come back. They just had a lot of energy on the other end and couldn’t.”
The Prairie School fell behind by four points with 4½ minutes left but threes by seniors Kody Krekling and Jacob Fallico gave the team a 41-39 lead with 2:02 left.
Lourdes came back with a putback by Bauer to tie the game with 1:45 to play and after Krekling couldn’t get a three from the corner to fall Lourdes held the ball for the final possessions.
Bauer missed a three with 42 seconds left, but Ruedinger’s offensive rebound set the stage for the game-winner, which was hit by a guy who missed the first part of the season recovering for a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
You wouldn’t have known it, however, based on how quickly he and his teammates sprinted off the court following the game-winner.
“Did somebody get my 40 time there, because that was the fastest I’ve run in my life,” Slagter joked. “I didn’t know where I was going either. I was just running to run.”
Semifinals
Sparked by another productive effort by senior Antuan Nesbitt and a 13-0 run that spanned the first and second halves, the Hawks scored a 61-46 victory over Onalaska Luther in a Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 4 semifinal Friday morning at the La Crosse Center.
The Hawks (24-4) will face Oshkosh Lourdes at 6:35 p.m. Friday. Lourdes (24-5) beat Edgar, 65-41, in the second semifinal.
“It’s a great opportunity for us. It’s something we’ve dreamed of coming into high school,” Nesbitt said. “We thought it would be possible, but nowthat it’s right in front of us, it doesn’t seem real.”
BOX SCORE: The Prairie School 61, Onalaska Luther 46
RELATED:Here are three reasons The Prairie School will bring home the gold ball.
Nesbitt, a 6-foot-4 wing who entered play averaging 21.5 points in the postseason, hit 8 of 14 shots and scored a game-high 18 points. Junior guard Asanjai Hunter added 13 points on 5-for-8 shooting. The Hawks also got 11 points and a team-high eight rebounds from sophom*ore wing Ashe Oglesby.
The Prairie School shot 49% (25 of 51), scored 42 points in the paint and got 19 points off turnovers. It led by as many as 23 points, takingcontrol during the final 3 minutes of the first half when it scored 11 straight points to turn a 23-22 lead into a 34-22 advantage at the break.
Hunter scored seven straight points during that run. He hit two free throws with 2 minutes 13 seconds left to push the lead to 28-22, converted a three-point play with 1:17 left and scored a put-back at with 45 seconds left to make it 33-22.
A free throw by senior KJ Williams snapped Hunter’s streak and gave the Hawks their 12-point lead at the break. A Hunter layup 12 seconds into the second half capped the run, but the Hawks maintained momentum the rest of the game asOnalaska Luther got no closer than 12.
“No matter what we threwat them, they had a response for it," Luther coach Brad Schaper said. "They completely took us out of our offensive set with their great pressure and their great guard play. What a good team."
The Knights were led by junior Gavin Proudfoot, a 6-7 forward who finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds. Senior Isaiah Schwichtenberg, who at 6-7 was the other half of the team’s twin towers, added nine points.
Luther had a clear-cut size advantage, but with Hunter,Williams and anyone else guarding a ball-handler putting on heavy pressure, the Knights' offense eventually withered.
“I thought the ball pressure was enormous,” Prairie School coach JasonAtanasoff said. “We did not let easy post entry passes, and in the first half especially we did a great job of not fouling. You’re rolling the dice a little bit if you want to play defense like that.”
As the outcome became clear, the big question was how Atanasoff, with a second game just hours away, would usehis roster down the stretch. The coach cleared his bench withabout 3 minutes remaining,though the team did eata lot of clock during its possessions.
The game ended at 10:30 a.m., giving the Hawks an eight-hour break before the final. The plan was to spend the break relaxing in the ballroom of a nearby hotel the WIAA reserved for teams to use between games.
There they'll have plenty of time to think about the opportunity in front of them. The gold ball is within reach.
“What these boys have already accomplished is special," Atanasoff said."You don’t want to let your mind wander, but it’s hard not to think what winning a gold ball for our boys basketball program would mean. It’s a credit to our players and our incredible assistant coaches.
"It would be a dream come true for everyone involved.”
Oshkosh Lourdes 65, Edgar 41: In the second semifinal senior guard Josh Bauer tied a Division 4 tournament single-game tournament record for field goal percentage by hitting eight of nine shots and scoring a game-high 24 points. Senior guard Preston Ruedinger added 18 points for the Knights, who led by as many as 21 points.
