MANHATTAN – As much as Sterling coach Derek Schneider relished watching the offensive exploits his team put on display in its first two games at the Class 2A state tournament – setting a then-tourney record with 97 points in the quarterfinals and then dropping 76 points on Heart of America League rival Ell-Saline in a semifinal shootout – he went out of his way to lament the defensive shortcomings the Black Bears showed in the third quarter of the semifinals.
 
Quite frankly, he knew if those reared their ugly head again in Saturday’s state championship game against Moundridge, it wasn’t going to end up well for his team.
 
“That’s what we preach,” Schneider said. “Like I told you the other day, I tell them to play good D. But when you’re out there shooting 60% from the field, sometimes that gets lost. But I knew tonight we would have to play good defense.”
 
With its prolific offense much tougher to come by against the undefeated two-time reigning state champion Wildcats in Saturday’s title game, Sterling leaned hard into things on the defensive end of the court. And that performance took center stage as Sterling completely locked up Moundridge.
 
Holding Moundridge standout duo Bear Moddelmog and Henry Hecox to nearly half their season scoring averages and the Wildcats as a team to 32% shooting as a team for the game, Sterling ended Moundridge’s undefeated season and two-year reign atop Class 2A. The Black Bears trailed only twice in the game and used a third-quarter spurt to build a nine-point lead they pretty much maintained the rest of the game on their way to a 56-42 victory.
 
The state championship capped a 23-3 season for Sterling and delivered the program’s first state title since 2012. 
 
“It feels amazing and still hasn’t fully set in,” Sterling junior guard Blake Smith said. “It hasn’t even set in that we were playing in a state championship. It’s just crazy. I can’t believe it.”
 

 
League rivals, Sterling and Moundridge squared off once during the regular season with the Wildcats taking a 58-47 victory in the first game following Christmas break. That was the only loss the Black Bears suffered in league play – their only others coming to 5A Great Bend in early December and to 3A Scott City in the Sterling Invitational title game.
 
And while Schneider said his team didn’t necessarily learn the exact formula it would take to beat Moundridge in that game, he did say the Black Bears were a much different team when the rematch occurred in the state championship game.
 
“We did return a lot of guys, but we also lost a lot of seniors from last year,” Schneider said, referring to the graduation of five seniors off last year’s fourth-place team, four of whom earned All-HOA honors of some capacity. “People sometimes forgot that and they just assumed we’d hit the ground running from Day One. And it took us time to come together as a team and get a lot of moving parts in the right spots.
 
“In that first game, we were still trying to figure out our identity and trying to buy into what I was selling a bit. It was kind of a crazy time because we were coming off Christmas break and had a game canceled and hadn’t played a basketball game in a month it seemed like.”
 
The pieces were all in place by the time Sterling hit the postseason and after cruising through three sub-state and two state tournament games averaging 79.2 points per game with an average margin of victory of 33 points, the Black Bears showed they could handle a much different pace in the championship game.
 
Sterling led just 14-12 at the end of the first quarter and just 22-19 at halftime in a slower paced game dictated more by defense than offense. But while Sterling was able to keep its shackles on the Wildcat offense in the second half, the Black Bears also found enough offensive rhythm to pull away.
 

 
Boston Ekart, who got off to a slow start in the semifinal win over Ell-Saline, opened the second half with an and-one three-point play that started a 7-2 run to begin the half. After Moundridge cut the lead to five on a Moddelmog 3-pointer, the Black Bears finished the period on a 10-3 run to open up a 39-27 lead at the end of the quarter.
 
Moddelmog finally got hot in the fourth quarter, scoring seven points and his 3-pointer with 1:54 left got the Wildcats within six. Smith and Zach Dashiell quickly answered with driving layups and Sterling was able to keep Moundridge at an arm’s length the rest of the way, steadily pulling away.
 
“Tonight and really the whole tournament, I thought we had a freeness about us,” Schneider said. “It’s amazing when you have a bunch of guys play free on a huge stage. It’s crazy how much they can accomplish.
 
“Moundridge is a great team. To beat them for the title, it’s pretty awesome.”
 
Ekart and Smith each finished with a game-high 15 points to lead Sterling, which shot just 35.7% from the floor and made only one 3-pointer in the game, but went 25 of 30 at the free throw line to outscore Moundridge by 19 points at the stripe. Ekart was 7 of 7, a by product of forcing the issue after a somewhat slow start in the semifinal game.
 
“(In the semifinals) I wasn’t really attacking the basket very well,” Ekart said. “Today I was going to come in with a mindset of attacking the basket because it forces them to do more stuff because I can dish it out, get fouled or make the layup.”
 

 
Jacob Lewis also joined the junior duo in double figures with 10 points off the bench, but Smith said the freshman’s biggest impact came on the defensive end.
 
“He’s a freshman who’s never played in a game this big in his life, and he just comes in and locks up their best player,” Smith said of Lewis, who was tasked with guarding Moddelmog for much of the game. “That was huge for us, to be able to take him out of the game. Wyatt (Newberry) is normally our go-to defender, but Bear’s a little bigger so we had Boston on him. And then Boston had to come out with foul trouble, so Jacob came in and then Wyatt locked up Hecox.”
 
Moddelmog finished with 14 points, but was just 5 of 17 from the floor and 2 of 10 from 3-point range. Hecox, who averaged 10.5 points per game this season, was held to just three points on 1 of 5 shooting.
 
“I thought our guys really rose to the challenge and our half-court defense tonight, I was so pleased with,” Schneider said. “We missed very few help sides and forced a ton of tough shots. We rebounded out of it. We had some mistakes, but our guys flushed the bad mistakes and moved on to the next possession.
 
“Jacob’s done that for us. He knows when he comes into the game, he’s going to guard the other team’s best player. Moddelmog is unbelievable and Jacob came out and played an incredible defensive game. Unbelievable.”
 

 
As a team, Moundridge made just 5 of 25 shots in the second and third quarters when Sterling began to take control of the game. The Wildcats were just 2 of 11 from beyond the arc and only got to the free throw line for one attempt over that stretch, while Sterling was able to cash in on 12 of 15 free throws in those quarters to offset 5-of-24 shooting from the floor.
 
The offensive woes were too much for the Wildcats to overcome and they saw their bid for a three-peat and first undefeated season for the program since doing it back-to-back in 1992 and 1993 come to a heartbreaking end.
 
“We got the looks that we wanted, but you’ve got to make baskets to beat a team like Sterling,” Moundridge coach Dustan Kanitz said. “We didn’t make enough baskets today. There were times of frustration when you miss looks you’ve made all year and ow you have to go to Plan B. It was just an uncomfortable feeling and credit to Sterling’s defense for coming up with a good game plan.
 
“The run that our guys made with our tough league and tough schedule was amazing and today we just came up a little bit short. For 26 games, we took everyone’s best shot and until today, we handled it like champions.”
 
Sterling’s last championship came in Schneider’s third year as head coach of the Black Bear program. In between, Sterling has had a number of teams capable of bringing home the crown, but have fallen short.

Just a year ago, Sterling went into the state tournament 21-2 and with the No. 2 seed before losing to Moundridge 56-45 in the semifinals.
 
Getting back on top this season is something Schneider already had put into perspective.
 
“You don’t take it for granted,” he said. “I was a just a young, dumb kid the first time and I thought we were going to do this every time. That’s not reality. You’ve got to work your absolute tail off. Nothing’s guaranteed. You can work your butt off every single day and nothing’s guaranteed. We’ll enjoy it.”
 

 
And that’s a message he’ll preach to his team in the offseason. The Black Bears had no seniors on this years roster with Ekart and Smith leading a talented junior class and Lewis and Dashiell heading a strong freshman group.
 
Sterling will undoubtedly find itself in the same position next year as Moundridge did this year, wearing the target on their back as overwhelming favorites to win the Class 2A state title.
 
“It’s going to be huge with everyone coming back,” Smith said. “For us to have this experience this year, it’s huge.”
 

 
 
THIRD PLACE
 
ELL-SALINE 109, VALLEY FALLS 74 – Ell-Saline wasn’t able to take down Heart of America League rival Sterling in Friday’s semifinals, falling 76-59.
 
But the Cardinals were able to take down a Class 2A state tournament record the Black Bears had set just two days earlier in the state quarterfinals.
 
In racing past Valley Falls in Saturday’s third-place game, Ell-Saline broke not only the 2A tourney scoring record of 97 points put up by Sterling in its quarterfinal win over Chase County, but also broke the overall state tournament single-game scoring record of 104 points set by Washburn Rural against Bishop Ward in the 1982 Class 5A state tournament.
 
The 183 combined points also rank No. 2 all-time in state tournament history, just three behind the combine 186 from Dodge City and Manhattan in a 101-85 Red Demon win in the 1979 Class 6A state tournament.
 
Ell-Saline scored 33 points in the first quarter to race out to a 33-15 lead on the Dragons.. The Cardinals then dropped 32 in both the second and third quarters to match Sterling’s output on Wednesday, leading 97-51. Ell-Saline then had 12 I nthe fourth quarter to cap its record-setting performance.
 
The Cardinals (22-4) finished 46 of 78 from the floor in the game, going 12 of 26 beyond the arc. Brogan Rowley capped his career with a monster 34-point game, making 15 of 18 shots, including 4 of 6 3-pointers. He was one of five Cardinal starters in double figures as Garrison Zerger added 19, Reese Krone 15, Kas Kramer 13 and Trey Williams 12.
 
Valley Falls (20-6) put four starters in double figures with Hayden Kearney scoring 16, Damian Cervantez 14, Collin Kearney 12 and Trenton VanHoutan 10. 
 

CLASS 2A BOYS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME BOXSCORE
 
STERLING 56, MOUNDRIDGE 42
 
Sterling … 14 … 8 … 17 … 17 … -- … 56
 
Moundridge … 12 … 7 … 8 … 15 … -- … 42
 
Sterling (23-3) – Smith 3-8 9-11 15, Farney 0-3 5-6 5, Newberry 2-7 0-0 4, B. Ekart 4-15 7-7 15, Morris 0-1 0-0 0, Lewis 3-5 4-6 10, Dashiell 3-3 0-0 7, Wohler 0-0 0-0 0, Isaac 0-0 0-0 0, Thompson 0-0 0-0 0, E. Ekart 0-0 0-0 0, Haas 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 15-42 25-30 56.
 
Moundridge (25-1) – Kanitz 3-7 2-4 8, Churchill 4-9 1-1 9, Hecox 1-5 1-2 3, Dixon 1-2 0-0 2, Moddelmog 5-17 2-2 14, Lutz 2-6 0-0 6, Adolf 0-3 0-0 0, Graber 0-0 0-0 0, Durst 0-0 0-0 0, Koehn 0-0 0-0 0, Den Hartog 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 16-50 6-9 42.
 
3-point goals – Sterling 1-12 (Dashiell 1-1, Smith 0-4, B. Ekart 0-4, Farney 0-1, Newberry 0-1, Morris 0-1); Moundridge 4-19 (Lutz 2-5, Moddelmog 2-10, Hecox 0-2, Adolf 0-1, Den Hartog 0-1). Rebounds – Sterling 29 (B. Ekart 6); Moundridge 25 (Churchill 8). Assists – Sterling 6 (Smith 3); Moundridge 6 (Moddelmog 2). Turnovers – Sterling 8 Moundridge 12. Total fouls – Sterling 16, Moundridge 21. Fouled out – Moundridge: Adolf, Hecox.
 
 THIRD PLACE
 
ELL-SALINE 109, VALLEY FALLS 74
 
Ell-Saline … 33 … 32 … 32 … 12 … -- … 109
 
Valley Falls … 15 … 23 … 13 … 23 … -- … 74
 
Ell-Saline (22-4) – Rowley 15-18 0-0 34, Krone 6-11 1-1 15, Zerger 7-11 3-3 19, Tr. Williams 5-9 0-0 12, Kramer 6-7 0-0 13, Dent 2-5 0-0 4, May 1-1 0-0 2, Ta. Williams 1-7 0-0 2, Wallen 0-2 1-2 1, Lutes 1-3 0-0 3, Gosvener 1-1 0-0 2, Tillberg 1-3 0-0 2. Totals 46-78 5-6 109.
 
Valley Falls (20-6) – H. Kearney 7-10 0-0 16, Cervantez 5-14 0-1 14, VanHoutan 4-16 2-2 10, C. Kearney 5-12 2-2 12, Seymour 3-3 0-0 7, Alveranga 1-1 2-3 4, Burge 0-0 0-0 0, Miller 2-3 0-0 6, Pickerell 0-0 0-0 0, Coleman 1-3 2-3 4, Guerrero 0-0 0-0 0, Young 0-0 1-2 1. Totals 28-63 9-13 74.
 
3-point goals – Ell-Saline 12-26 (Rowley 4-6, Krone 2-2, Zerger 2-5, Tr. Williams 2-4, Kramer 1-2, Lutes 1-3, Dent 0-2, Ta. Williams 0-1, Allen 0-1); Valley Falls 9-29 (Cervantez 4-13, H. Kearney 2-2, Miller 2-3, Seymour 1-1, VanHoutan 0-6, C. Kearney 0-2, Guerrero 0-1). Rebounds – Ell-Saline 39 (Krone 7); Valley Falls 25 (Cervantez 6, C. Kearney 6). Assists – Ell-Saline 18 (Kramer 5); Valley Falls 14 (C. Kearney 4). Turnovers – Ell-Saline 5, Valley Falls 14. Total fouls – Ell-Saline 11, Valley Falls 6. Fouled out – None.