South Iron Wins Championship, Lesterville Takes Third Place for Boys at the Black River League Tournament

(Piedmont, Mo.) On the boys side of the Black River League Tournament tonight on J98, it was the South Iron Panthers taking home the championship while the Lesterville Bearcats earned a third place victory.

The third place game saw Lesterville take on the host team, the Clearwater Tigers. It was a back-and-forth first half as Clearwater was kept in the game thanks to a tremendous effort by senior Taylor Hicks.

Hicks finished with 32 points and also scored his 1,000th career point in the game. Lesterville went into halftime with a 33-29 lead, and then late in the fourth quarter, it was the Bearcats’ Nolan Mathes who rose up and drilled a big three to put the game away for good.

The Bearcats were able to tack on to the lead as they won by a final score of 79-71. Lesterville head coach Anthony Caruso said while his team would have preferred to be playing in the championship, they still fought hard to earn third place.

The win improves the Bearcats’ record to 14-5 while Clearwater falls to 8-8.

The boys championship featured the South Iron Panthers taking on the East Carter Redbirds. The Panthers struggled to hit shots in the first half as the Redbirds went into the break with a 28-24 lead. Then in the the third quarter it was all South Iron as they outscored the Redbirds 26-7 in the frame and started to get on a roll…

Later in the quarter it was Applebee’s Player of the Game Brock Wakefield who drilled a shot to make it a double-digit lead…

From there South Iron rolled to victory by a final score of 65-50 to take home the boys championship of the Black River League Tournament. Panthers head coach Dusty Dinkins says he enjoyed the opportunity for his team to battle through some adversity in a big game like this…

The win improves South Iron to 18-0 on the season while the loss drops East Carter to 10-6.

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