Prairie Grove Boys Breeze Past Saints 51-40

BEN MADRID ENTERPRISE-LEADER Prairie Grove senior Leighton Smith passes around a Shiloh Christian defender on the baseline. Prairie Grove defeated the Saints 51-40 in 4A-1 boys basketball action on Jan. 6.
BEN MADRID ENTERPRISE-LEADER Prairie Grove senior Leighton Smith passes around a Shiloh Christian defender on the baseline. Prairie Grove defeated the Saints 51-40 in 4A-1 boys basketball action on Jan. 6.

PRAIRIE GROVE -- A number of years have transpired since the Prairie Grove Tigers (6-8, 2-1) and the Shiloh Saints have met on the hardwood as 4A-1 conference opponents.

Last Tuesday, Prairie Grove rudely welcomed Shiloh back to the conference with a 51-40 victory over the Saints in a contest held at Prairie Grove.

Earlier this season the Tigers had trouble with turnovers and with handling adversity, oftentimes going long periods of time without scoring (usually due to the high number of turnovers). Against the Saints, the Tigers limited their turnovers to just 12, and after building a lead Prairie Grove was able to turn away Shiloh every time they made a run.

"I thought the way we played defensively in the first half was the difference in the game," said Tiger coach Steve Edmiston. "We did a solid job, kept them off the offensive boards, didn't give them a lot of second shots and we were able to create our lead because of that."

Gavin Heltemes scored the first 4 points of the game, two of those points coming after a steal and subsequent lay-up. The Saints countered with 3 points, however Dylan Soehner closed out the period with a pair of buckets in the lane, the second coming with two ticks on the clock which staked the Tigers to an 8-3 advantage.

The Tigers dialed up the long ball in the second period with DJ Strong stroking a pair of trifectas and Tanner Pursell pitching in with one triple. Prairie Grove built a 15 point, 20-5, lead midway through the period, but watched as the Saints whittled the margin down to single digits, 20-11. Strong's second 3-ball stopped the Saints' momentum and when combined with a Nick Ellis basket in the waning seconds of the period helped the Tigers carry a 25-11 lead going into halftime.

Strong opened the third frame with his third 3-pointer which gave the Tigers their biggest lead at 18 points. The pesky Saints proved difficult to put away as they battled back to a 13-point deficit by the end of the frame.

Despite 6 points from Parker Galvan in the final stanza the Saints were still able to reduce the Tigers lead down to single digits. A pair of 3-pointers late in the period from Shiloh's Logan Foster and Hunter Wilson helped cut the lead to 48-40 with one minute left in the contest. Heltemes was able to knock down a pair of freebies from the charity-stripe and Galligan was able to add one more point from the free-throw line, which brought the final score to 51-40.

"The more we play together the better our team chemistry gets," Galligan said after the contest. "Just like last year at the beginning it was a little rough, but we just kept getting stronger, and I think it will be the same this year."

Galligan paced a quartet of Tigers in double digits with 12 points, with Pursell, Soehner and Strong each adding 10 points apiece. Heltemes finished with 6 points, Ellis pitched in 2 points and Leighton Smith rounded out the scoring with 1 point.

Sports on 01/14/2015