Soaring Hawks slow down Tornadoes

The Chester/J-I Hawks have been one of the best teams in the District 9C all year and in the opening round of the 9C boys tournament, they played like it.

The Turner Tornadoes were big underdogs coming into Wednesday’s quarterfinal game inside the HHS gymnasium in Havre. And despite a valiant effort from the Tornadoes, C/J-I was simply too good and too talented for Turner to hang with, and when the final buzzer sounded, the Hawks won 90-41.

“We came out and played well,” C/J-I head coach Spencer Satori said. “It was good for us to go out and get back to basketball and try to get back to things being normal with everything that has gone on this week.”

Satori, of course is referring to the incident that happened between a teacher and a student that led to the suspension of one of C/J-I’s player. Yet, following an emergency school board meeting, the player was reinstated and took the floor against the Tornadoes.

Yet, in terms of basketball, things were business as usual for the Hawks, who were 6-of-12 from 3-point range and started the game with a 26-15 run to give C/J-I an 11-point lead after the first eight minutes of play.

Then, in the second quarter, the Hawks continued to dominate, especially on the offensive end of the floor, pouring in 31 points, which helped them build an impressive 57-27 halftime lead.

“I thought we came out and played hard right from the start,” Satori said. “We were able to get some things going and I was happy with how we played defensively. It was good that we were able to get a lead and able to get some rest for our players there in the second half.”

Even though they didn’t win the game, no team takes more pride in playing for its community than Turner does and despite being down big in the second half, the Tornadoes continued to battle. Unfortunately, C/J-I was just better. And in the final 16 minutes of action, the Hawks outscored Turner 33-14 to wrap up a 90-41 victory.

The win moves C/J-I into the semifinals for the second straight year, and tonight they will battle Hays-Lodge Pole for the right to play in the 9C championship game Friday night.

“Hays (Lodge-Pole) is a very good team,” Satori said. “We are going to have to make sure we get back on defense. They are a team that likes to run and we are a team that likes to run, so it should be a really exciting fast-paced game.”

While there were a lot of Hawks that played well Wednesday, no one played better than Troy Harmon, who scored 33 points in the win, which was the best individual performance of the day at the 9C. Harmon was 14-of-21 from the field in the win and was also 3-of-5 from 3-point range.

Joining Harmon in double figures for C/J-I (16-3) was Cory Richter, who managed 15 points, while Brandon Richter added 11. Bruce Tempel finished the game with 10 and Justin May also hit a pair of triples on his way to nine.

Leading the way for Turner (4-15) was senior Brett Van Valkenburg. He was 5-for-11 to lead Turner in a losing effort. Cody Welsh also pitched in with eight points for the Tornadoes and Eddie Harmon had eight.

Turner played Fort Benton this morning in loser-out action. The winner of that game will advance to Friday, the loser is out. HLP and C/J-I will meet in the semifinals tonight at 8:30 while Box Elder plays Chinook in the first semifinal at 7.

Chester/J-I 90, Turner 41

Turner 15 12 12 2 — 41

C/J-I 26 31 21 12 — 90

Turner — Cody Welsh 11, Tyler Humphreys 4, Damian Schumacher 2, Bret Van Valkenburg 12, Eddie Harmon 8, Tracer Helig 4.

C/J-I — Cory Richter 15, Brandon Richter 11, Evan Dahinden 4, Troy Harmon 33, Bobby Whitley 5, Tyler Wanken 2, Justin May 9, Bruce Tempel 10.