Monticello has 3rd-quarter goose egg, 4th-quarter rally in state basketball quarterfinal win

DES MOINES — It’s almost impossible to be scoreless in the third quarter, go 11 minutes and 35 seconds between points and win a basketball game.

Especially a state tournament basketball game.

That’s “almost” impossible. Monticello showed you Tuesday morning it isn’t totally impossible.

“These guys just keep getting things done that a lot of people don’t think they’re going to get done,” Coach Tim Lambert said, after his Panthers somehow beat Mid-Prairie, 46-43, in a Class 2A state tournament quarterfinal at Wells Fargo Arena. “They just keep making plays, they buy in, they stay the course. We’re probably the smallest team in the whole field in 2A, maybe the whole tournament. But they just battle.”

Mid-Prairie (24-1) scored all 15 points of the third quarter for a 33-27 lead. A pair of free throws by Alex Bean at the start of the fourth made it an eight-point Golden Hawks spread.

» Photos: Monticello vs. Mid-Prairie in Class 2A state quarterfinals

Monticello (22-3) went the final 1:10 of the first half without a point, was 0 for 10 from the field in the woeful third and was bupkis points wise the first 2:25 of the fourth.

This thing was over. Only it wasn’t.

“Honestly I couldn’t tell you what happened,” Monticello’s Tate Petersen said. “We just kept on shooting. We knew they would fall eventually, and they did in the fourth quarter.”

Petersen hit back-to-back treys to cap an out-of-the-blue 10-0 Monti run that gave it the lead back, 37-35. Tied at 37, sophomore Preston Ries nailed a corner 3 with 1:07 left to put the Panthers ahead for good.

Look at Monticello’s score by quarters: 7, 20, 0, 19. Win.

“You know, it was just being mentally tough,” said Ries.

“I’m just super proud of our guys,” said Petersen, who had a game-high 19 points. “Like we said all year, just keep your composure. People are going to go on runs. Obviously we didn’t want it to be that much of a run, but we just stuck with it. We believed in ourselves, and we fought to the end.”

These teams were River Valley Conference division champs and played a regular-season finale that Mid-Prairie won pretty comfortably, 65-50. The Golden Hawks did a lot of good things here, just not consistently.

One of the telltale stats was 18 Mid-Prairie turnovers. So was Monticello holding Golden Hawks all-stater Carter Harmsen to 11 points, nine under his average.

“It was like the first half again. We kind of fell apart there in the fourth quarter,” Harmsen said. “Bad shots, lazy turnovers.”

“We took turns hitting shots at different points in the game,” said Mid-Prairie Coach Daren Lambert, no relation to Tim. “In the second and fourth quarters, they got us pretty good, and we didn’t capitalize on that offensive end. On our end, we had a really good third quarter. It was just two really good teams going back and forth. That’s what you expect here at state. We knew it was going to be that type of battle. Unfortunately time just ran out on us today.”

This was Monticello’s third consecutive appearance at the state tournament, after a 60-year gap and its second state tournament win, its first since 1960. After knocking off the No. 3 seed, the Panthers meet No. 2-seed Rock Valley (20-5) in a Thursday afternoon semifinal at 12:15.

AT DES MOINES

MONTICELLO (46): Caleb Sauser 2-4 0-0 6, Peyton Schilling 1-5 0-0 3, Tate Petersen 6-14 3-3 19, Preston Ries 4-14 2-2 11, Trey Kuper 0-0 0-0 0, Ian Temple 2-5 2-2 7. Totals 15-42 7-7 46.

MID-PRAIRIE (43): Will Cavanagh 4-7 0-0 9, Alex Bean 1-3 5-5 7, Jackson Pennington 2-5 0-0 5, Carter Harmsen 4-10 2-4 11, Ethan Kos 2-3 1-3 5, Camron Pickard 1-1 0-1 2, Justice Jones 1-1 2-2 4. Totals 15-30 10-15 43.

Halftime - Monticello 27, Mid-Prairie 18. 3-point goals - Monticello 9-25 (Sauser 2-3, Schiling 1-4, Petersen 4-9, Ries 1-5, Temple 1-4), Mid-Prairie 3-10 (Cavanagh 1-3, Bean 0-2, Pennington 1-2, Harmsen 1-3). Rebounds - Monticello 21 (Ries 9), Mid-Prairie 23 (Harmsen 8). Total fouls - Monticello 13, Mid-Prairie 13. Fouled out - None. Assists - Monticello 6 (Sauser 3), Mid-Prairie 5 (Pennington 3). Turnovers - Monticello 12, Mid-Prairie 18.

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