Published: February 17, 2009 11:46 pm      

HOOPS: Heights beats NW to grab share of MIC lead

Four times since joining the Mid-Indiana Conference in 2000-01, Hamilton Heights has finished in second place in the boys basketball standings.

The Huskies look ready to make the final step up the ladder.

Heights beat two-time defending league champion Northwestern 67-53 Tuesday night on the Purple Tigers’ floor to move within a win of at least a share of the title.

Heights and Western share the league lead with 5-1 records. Each has one game remaining — Western hosts Cass on Friday and Heights visits Peru on Feb. 27.

“It’s definitely been a goal for us,” second-year Heights coach Chad Ballenger said of winning the conference. “It’s been an awfully good conference. It doesn’t matter if we can share it or what, we’d just like to have a piece of it.”

Ballenger liked how his squad looked against the Tigers. The Huskies used a 12-0 run in the first half to take the lead for good and a 16-2 run in the third quarter to quell the Tigers’ comeback bid.

“You’re out of your routine to play that midweek game. I just wasn’t sure what we’d get out of our kids, but I thought we looked real focused in our pregame and in our shootaround. They came to play [Tuesday],” Ballenger said. “We’ve been kind of up and down as a team this year, but the last few weeks, we’ve really turned a corner.”

Heights has won eight of its last 11 games to improve to 11-8 overall.

Heights led 23-10 early in the second quarter, but Northwestern battled back to within three, 27-24, by halftime. Northwestern forward Zech Sanders drilled a pair of 3-pointers to key the Tigers’ charge.

Up 33-30 three minutes into the third quarter, the Huskies delivered the knockout blow in the form of the 16-2 run. Austin Weatherford ignited the run with two 3-pointers and Seth Small capped it with a triple off a post kickout in the closing seconds of the quarter, putting the Huskies up 49-32.

“They hit four 3s in the third and we went cold in the third. The combination of the two put us in such a hole that we couldn’t dig our way out,” Northwestern coach Jim Gish said.

Sanders exploded for 17 of his game-high and career-high 28 points in the fourth quarter, but Huskies allowed the Tigers to come no closer than 12. Weatherford knocked down 8 of 8 free throws and scored 12 points to keep the Huskies firmly in control.

Weatherford finished with 25 points. Also for the Huskies, Nick Hartley scored 15 points, Small added a dozen and Austin Etherington chipped in nine points and a game-high nine rebounds.

The Huskies finished 24 of 43 (56 percent) from the field. Their hot shooting made up for 20 turnovers.

“We can really score in spurts,” Ballenger said. “We’ve had quarters of [30 or more points] a few times. We’re pretty effective when we can get out in transition. We just have to take care of the ball better.”

Sanders’ 28 marked his third straight 20-point game and Jimmy McKee offered eight points and a team-high seven rebounds, but the Tigers had little other offense. They finished 21 of 62 (33.9 percent) from the field and committed 15 turnovers.

“We had a lot of good looks,” Gish said, lamenting in particular a missed layup when the Tigers were still within striking distance.

Austin Henderson, the Tigers’ top shooter off the bench, missed the game with an illness.

The Tigers have lost two straight and four of their last five to fall to 10-8.

“We just have to do things better if we’re going to win,” Gish said. “We have 15 turnovers [Tuesday] — 10 to 12 is our mark and 15 is just not going to work for us. We have to take care of the basketball, we have to hit free throws and we have to make good decisions. … We have to think a better game to be able to pull the game out against good competition.”