BLOOMINGTON – One might say luck ran out on Stanford Olympia High’s Boys basketball team Wednesday at the Bloomington Normal State Farm Holiday Classic.

Olympia, having won seven straight, including beating Macon Meridian Tuesday, to get to the Class 1A-2A semi-finals at Illinois Wesleyan’s Shirk Center, was looking to make Minonk Fieldcrest its eighth straight victim.

But Minonk Fieldcrest doubled up on Oly, 56-28, to advance to the Class 1A-2A Final at Shirk Center Thursday night against Bloomington Central Catholic. Olympia will meet Peoria Christian in the Class’ 3rd place game at Normal West High School, starting at 1:30p.m.

Olympia (11-3) played without the services of junior forward Mike Hallstein, who was home with the flu. Hallstein played although ill Tuesday night in the Spartans’ win over Macon Meridian.

“They just beat us,” said Olympia head coach Gerry Thornton afterward. “They just beat us.”

Minonk Fieldcrest (12-0) jumped out to a fast 7-0 lead shortly after tip-off, on the strength of a deuce and a three by senior forward Taylor Baxter, and a jumper by Kaleb Garber. Olympia’s first basket did not come until Grant Litwiler hit a deuce with 3:25 in the first quarter, cutting the Knights’ lead, 7-2.

Lonnie Kirby went 1-for-2 from the free throw line after being fouled, for the only other scoring by the Spartans in the quarter, giving Minonk Fieldcrest a 14-3 lead going into the second quarter.

Although Oly managed to score just 10 points in the second quarter, their defense could not hold back Baxter, who scored 13 of his game-high 24 points before the half – nine of those points coming on a trio of unanswered threes, pushing the Knights’ lead to 29-13 to start the third quarter.

Minonk Fieldcrest increased their lead to 45-23 at the end of the third quarter, with two baskets by Spencer Pratt and a bucket each by Noah Williams and Litwiler helping the Spartans to maintain their pursuit.

Baxter led all scorers with a game-high 24 points, followed by 10 from teammate Trent Hartzler for the Knights. Pratt was Olympia’s lone double-figures player, with 10 points.

“I thought we had a pretty good scheme and then Baxter made some sensational shots,” Thornton said. “For a team with one starter back, we’ve had a good year. We’ll get better. We’re better than we showed tonight.”

“I thought our defense really made offense go tonight,” explained Minonk Fieldcrest head coach Matt Winkler. “I just thought we played 32 minutes of basketball tonight. I’m just proud of our guys for playing inspired, hard-nosed defense. We’ve gotten better rebounding, which was one of our weaknesses.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Olympia HS, Pekin Daily Times, State Farm Holiday Classic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.