Fort Cobb-Broxton boys, Hammon girls advance to Class B state tournament
By Glen Brockenbush
CACHE - The top boys and girls basketball teams in Class B were on the floor at Cache on Friday night.
And both ultimately played the way one would expect top-ranked teams to play, with both teams winning their Area II championship games and punching their tickets to the Class B state tournament.
The Fort Cobb-Broxton boys found themselves down early to a scrappy Duke team, but found their shooting stroke in the third quarter especially and ran away with a 63-42 victory. Then the top-ranked Hammon girls smothered Lookeba-Sickles with their defense en route to a 59-29 win.
Earlier in the day, the Mountain View-Gotebo girls beat local rival Fort Cobb-Broxton to advance to the consolation championship against Lookeba-Sickles, another Caddo County team. The Duke boys will play Sentinel, which overwhelmed Big Pasture with their pace.
Fort Cobb-Broxton 63, Duke 42 (boys area championship)
In past years, Fort Cobb-Broxton might have been known for a run-and-gun style of offense.
This year’s edition of the Mustangs can score at a fast pace, even if they prefer to play more in the half court.
In the first quarter, it was Duke who opted to play quicker, with Jorden Chevis scoring nine of the Tigers’ 11 first-half points and starting multiple fast breaks with a steal.
With his team trailing by a couple of baskets early, Fort Cobb coach Scott Hines didn’t panic. Instead, he let his team weather the storm.
“I started to call time out and thought, ‘No, they need to learn to play through this, this could be good for us,’” Hines said. “I told them, ‘Just keep going, keep playing and things will start turning around.’”
It started with Jaxon Willits’ jumper just before the end of the first quarter that cut the Tigers’ lead to two. That sparked a 15-2 run that spanned nearly the entire second quarter.
And in a déjà vu moment, Fort Cobb got another basket just before the buzzer, with Kray Rogers hitting a 3-pointer to send the teams to halftime with the score 27-18 in favor of the Mustangs. Oddly enough, they felt the margin could have been larger, considering they missed six consecutive 3-pointers across the first two quarters.
“The second quarter, we really had a chance to get away from them, and we missed several open 3’s,” Hines said. “The third quarter, things started going in.”
Go in they did. Of the Mustangs’ next eight attempts from long range, seven went in, including four of Simeon Collins’ five triples on the night.
His 15 points earned him a tie for top scorer on the night for Fort Cobb. Collins had to share that honor with Rogers, who tallied a triple-double with 10 rebounds and 10 assists as well. Rogers didn’t take too many shots himself until late in the third quarter and in the fourth.
Hines said Rogers, a move-in from Cordell from two years ago, has the ultimate attribute a coach can look for in a point guard - he puts the team first.
“I told Kray once, ‘Everything is contagious. If you’re selfish, that’s contagious for your teammates. If you’re unselfish, that’s contagious, too,’” Hines said. “And he really is unselfish. He doesn’t matter if he scores five points or 25 points, as long as the team wins.”
The Mustangs are headed to the state tournament for a 13th consecutive year. Outside of Rogers and Eli Willits, almost all of the key figures for Hines’ club are seniors, but none of them have been on a title-winning team, with FCB’s last championship coming in 2018.
Still, Hines feels like this group has the experience and unselfish attitude to change that.
“They’ve been there. They’ve seen everything,” Hines said. “Nothing’s gonna shock them, nothing’s gonna surprise them.”
Hammon 59, Lookeba-Sickles 29 (girls area championship)
While 6-foot-4 Henley West gets many of the headlines for the Lady Warriors, it was Hammon’s guard play and full-court defense that did the most damage to Lookeba-Sickles in the first half.
Whether it was forcing a turnover or simply making it difficult for the Lady Panthers to get up the floor, Hammon’s defense, led by the aggressive Maylee Chaney, was wreaking havoc.
Lookeba-Sickles used the 3-pointer to get back into the game, with Ellie Willard hitting a triple to cut the deficit to 21-18 in the second quarter. The Lady Panthers’ Abby Mashaney hit a 3 to make the score 25-21, which it remained into the waning moments of the first half.
Hammon’s Maria Espinosa hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to make the halftime score 28-21.
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The shots just didn’t fall for Lookeba-Sickles in the third quarter, as the Lady Panthers were held to just six points in the entire period. Meanwhile, the Lady Warriors once again got points off turnovers, and continued to get scoring from multiple sources, with all five starters recording a basket in the quarter.
They ended up with four players with at least 12 points on the night.
Lookeba’s dry spell bled into the fourth quarter, with the Lady Panthers not registering a single point in the frame until there was just more than a minute left in the game.
The Lady Warriors (22-5) head back to the state tournament for the third consecutive time and 12th time in 14 years. The Lady Panthers face Mountain View-Gotebo, whom they beat by 45 in January.
Mountain View-Gotebo 52, Fort Cobb-Broxton 42 (girls consolation)
Freshman Rowyn Fite scored 16 of Mountain View-Gotebo’s 26 first-half points, which proved to be a harbinger of things to come. She would continue her exceptional scoring pace in the second half, finishing with 29 points.
“She has definitely played above her grade level. She’s been our leading scorer since our first couple of games of the year,” Mountain View-Gotebo head coach J.B. Kimberlin said. “But even when she’s not putting points up on the board, our other girls are stepping up and helping her out.
"Teams are really starting to key in on her, but our other girls have stepped up and played well, too, in this playoff run that we’ve had.”
It was the rubber match between the two Caddo County rivals.
Now, the Lady Tigers face another familiar foe in Lookeba-Sickles, a team which delivered an 80-35 beating to MVG back in late January.
“Any time you play a team two or three times in a season, it’s tough,” Kimberlin said. "There’s no surprises; both coaches know what the other is going to do, what they think.”
Sentinel 64, Big Pasture 28 (boys consolation)
After an emotional, last-minute win over Granite the night before, Big Pasture looked out of sorts for much of Friday’s game.
The space wasn’t there on offense, the rebounds went to Sentinel and perhaps most importantly, the Rangers struggled to slow down the Bulldogs’ fast-break attack.
After leading 14-9 after the first quarter, Sentinel really took control in the second quarter, with Brody Wooton and Maverick Sanders hitting 3-pointers as the Bulldogs went on a 21-5 run.
The lopsided scoring margin continued in the second half, as Big Pasture was held to just six points in the third quarter. Wooton scored 11 by himself in that time frame, many of them on fast breaks.
Wooton finished the game with 18 points in just three quarters. Sanders finished with 11 points and Raul Lopez had 12.
