Nixa gets its revenge over Catholic at Bass Pro Tournament of Champions, but it's not satisfied
When Catholic was chosen as a replacement team the week before the Bass Pro Tournament of Champions, you wouldn't have blamed Nixa if it thought of what could come on the second day of the tournament.
If both teams won or lost on Thursday, a rematch of the best game at the 2021 Blue and Gold Tournament would take place on the same floor in which Catholic came away with a one-point victory behind Zach Howell's 33 points.
Both teams lost in thrillers on Thursday leading to Friday and it didn't disappoint.
In the rematch between two of the area's best, this time, the Eagles came out on top.
Nixa advanced to the Tournament of Champions consolation championship with a 56-53 win over Catholic on Friday evening. The Eagles will play Parkview in another rematch from a Dec. 7 game that saw the Eagles top the Vikings 49-40.
"When you lose to someone, that's even more motivation to win," senior forward Jaret Nelson said. "You definitely don't want to get beat twice. Coming into this game, I think everyone was even more amped up to play."
A 12-1 run in the fourth quarter proved to provide the distance the Eagles needed to come away with the win. They trailed by five with 5:36 left before Jordyn Turner hit a 3 and Jackson Bell three-point play gave the Eagles a lead they didn't give back.
But it wasn't as pretty as it sounded.
Poor free-throw shooting, which plagued the Eagles during their loss to Catholic at the Blue and Gold, made another appearance. They finished 15-of-27 from behind the line which included big ones down the stretch that allowed Catholic to hang around and have a shot at tying the game as time expired.
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It comes a day after the Eagles went 13-of-22 from the charity stripe in a heartbreaking one-point loss at the buzzer against Milton (Atlanta). Better free-throw shooting would have had Nixa playing in the winner's bracket instead of the consolation.
"If you don't make free throws, it just complicates everything and when you make them, everything goes smoother," Nixa head coach Jay Osborne said. "Right now, we're struggling in some areas. For a coach, in mid-January when your team's struggling, I take that personal. We'll get really positive around here once we start playing a little bit better."
Not all was bad for the Eagles in victory. A shift in the game plan had them better prepared to guard Howell, Catholic's senior star, who finished the game with 18 points on 6-of-10 shooting.
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Turner took on the challenge of guarding Howell, even though he joked that he thought Kael Combs would get the assignment. Limiting Howell to 10 attempts from the field isn't an easy thing to do.
"He's a tough matchup, man," Osborne said. "He got loose a couple of times, but I thought for the most part that we did a pretty good job on him. holding him to 18 is really good. I thought if we held him under 25 that we'd win the game."
Turner finished the game with 16 points after he was shut out against the Irish just two weeks before. He hit 5-of-10 shots with three makes from deep. Nelson added 12 with Colin Ruffin scoring 11 with seven rebounds.
It wasn't the prettiest of wins, but when Howell's game-tying 3-point attempt at the buzzer didn't fall, Nixa wasn't complaining and it's on to the next one.
"I was proud of our guys and they played hard," Osborne said. "Our guys play hard, they care and the effort is there. We just have some things that we have to get better at."
Wyatt D. Wheeler is a reporter and columnist with the Springfield News-Leader. You can contact him at 417-371-6987, by email at wwheeler@news-leader.com or Twitter at @WyattWheeler_NL. He's also the co-host of Sports Talk on Jock Radio weekdays from 4-6 p.m.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: High school basketball: Nixa gets its revenge over Catholic
