Boys basketball team wins third straight

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The Hastings boys basketball team is back to .500, thanks to a three-game winning streak.

Hastings beat Park on Tuesday, Feb. 23, to improve to 11-11 on the season with three games to play.

Those three games won’t be easy ones by any stretch, as the Raiders face White Bear Lake (16-7), Forest Lake (18-5) and Stillwater (17-6). It is yet another difficult stretch of Suburban East Conference games, which is nothing new to Hastings.

Regardless, Hastings is heading into the final three games of the season playing its best basketball of the year.

“I told the guys, our last few games now have been the best games of the year for us,” Hastings coach Chad Feikema said. “At this point, we just hope we are peaking at the right time and can continue to play well down the stretch here.”

Vs Roseville

Hastings beat Roseville Friday, Feb. 19, 86-77.

Hastings scored 52 points in the first half and led by 15 at halftime.

“We were really efficient,” Feikema said. “It wasn’t that the pace of the game was really chaotic or anything. We were just really efficient. We just got good shots on a high percentage of our possessions and were able to convert.”

The second half, too, was well played by Hastings. Scoring was spread throughout the lineup, including two players with more than 20. Nick Gmiterko led Hastings in scoring with 31 points. Shane Monjeau had 22.

Mike Hills and Darius Wilkerson were both in double figures. Hill had 15 and Wilkerson had 13.

Tony Hammes had four points and Ellis Williams had one point to round out the night.

“It was just execution,” Feikema said. “We ran a lot of sets in this particular game and we rolled through those quite well. Even when we were running some of our basic motion sets, we did a good job of reversing the ball and getting some open shots. We got some of their players out of position.”

Vs Park

Hastings beat Park on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 62-42.

Monjeau led the Raiders in scoring with 22 points. Hill had 14, Gmiterko had 11, Williams had 7, Hammes had 6 and Josh Harstad had 2.

Sections

At the moment, Hastings is tied for the second-best record in its section.

Owatonna has 16 wins to lead the section.

Rochester Century has 11 wins with three games to play.

Section seeding is Saturday, March 6.

Tags: sports, basketball, hastings, prep