HUTCHINSON – As he sat on the bench after picking up his third foul midway through the second quarter of Saturday’s Class 3A state championship game, Sebastian Hines-Turner had just one thought running through his mind.
 
“It was just so tough sitting there watching my team,” he said. “I felt like I disappointed them. I don’t help my team by sitting on the bench.”
 
Needless to say there was some extra motivation when Hines-Turner returned to the court at the start of the second half with his Wichita Collegiate team trailing upset-minded Burlington 18-17.
 
And that led to one of the all-time great quarters in state championship game history. The Spartans’ senior standout went into full-blown takeover mode and turned in a performance of the ages in the third quarter that ultimately propelled Collegiate to a 55-42 victory.
 
“At halftime, I knew the guys were going to lean on me,” Hines-Turner said. “They just know when I’m on the court with them, something special is going to happen.”
 

 
It doesn’t get more special than what Hines-Turner did in that epic third quarter. He had scored a team-high seven points before picking up his third foul with 4:18 to go in the first half on a charge but had only hit 3 of 7 shots and missed his only 3-point attempt.
 
But after missing his first shot of the third quarter, the switch flipped, particularly after Burlington built a four-point lead on a 3-pointer by Troy Over, whose buzzer-beater on Thursday knocked off defending 3A champion Hesston in triple-overtime.
 
The heater Hines-Turner got on had the entire Hutchinson Sports Arena crowd buzzing. He scored inside. He knocked down 3-pointers. Pull-up jumpers. Driving layups.
 
The entire arsenal was on display and even his teammates were left a bit in awe.
 
“We can tell when he’s in that mode,” said senior guard AJ Batiste, who had his own takeover game with a 41-point outing in Collegiate’s record-setting 106-point performance in the quarterfinals. “You can see that look in his eyes and it’s just like, ‘Keep on getting it to him, keep on getting it to him,’ and let him work.”
 
Hines-Turner finished the quarter with an isolation step-back 3-pointer from the wing, the punctuation mark on a period where he hit 7 of 9 shots including 3 of 4 3-pointers for a monster 17-point period. He outscored Burlington by six points himself and had 17 of Collegiate’s 10 as the Spartans turned their one-point halftime deficit into a 36-29 lead.
 
“It makes my job a lot easier,” Collegiate coach Nate Schmitt said. “When he gets going, we know. Get him the ball and get out of the way. He carried us in the third and he was great.”
 

 
Like most of his teammates, Hines-Turner was frustrated throughout the first half as shots didn’t fall. But he took out those frustrations in a big way with that third-quarter explosion.
 
“I work on those shots and trusting and believing in my game was something I had to do,” Hines-Turner said. “That’s what I did. It might have been nerves but I know how to control them. I’m a senior and I’m experienced and I know how to put my team on my back and keep my head up. Because if they see my head drop, they’re going to drop too.
 
“So it’s just keep my confidence up. Coach Jennings (Collegiate assistant CJ) always says, ‘Just see one go in.’ And once one went in, I believed in my game and then it was just surreal.”
 
It was a somewhat helpless feeling for Burlington, which had clamped down so well on Hines-Turner and the Spartans as a whole in the first half. Coming off the thrilling triple-overtime win over Hesston on Thursday, the Wildcats showed no lingering effects of weariness in holding them to a combined 4-of-12 shooting performance as well as forcing seven turnovers and allowing just one offensive rebound.
 
Even as Collegiate pulled away in the second half, it wasn’t a case of Burlington’s energy level fizzing. It was merely Hines-Turner going into super-human mode.
 
“We were definitely happy to have the day off yesterday, that’s for sure,” Burlington coach Justin Logan said. “I know it was about mid-afternoon and all the guys you could slowly see that juice getting back into them and it was ‘All right, let’s go get another one.’ We came out with a lot of juice and I felt like we did a really good job on the defensive end, forcing them into tough shots, making sure we had one-shot defense. Unfortunately that third quarter he got hot and whoa, he’s a heck of a player. A whole another level of athlete for sure.”
 

 
Despite Hines-Turner’s monstrous third quarter, the Wildcats did enough on its end to still be within seven points going into the fourth quarter. A Shawn Mautz layup to start the fourth made it a five-point game and after rallying to knock off Hesston in the semifinals, Burlington fans were hoping for repeat against Collegiate.
 
But the Spartans snuffed that life quickly with a 9-0 run to go up 14. Collegiate then simply put the ball in Hines-Turner’s hands and made Burlington foul him and he hit 7 of 9 in the fourth quarter to finish with 33 points.
 
“I give it to Burlington, they came out to play,” Hines-Turner said. “Nobody probably had them coming out of that Hesston game. But they came out and played hard against us and I hang my hat to them.
 
“But we knew what the game plan was and once we honed in and locked in on the game plan, we were able to start to push away and it came to us.”
 
In addition to his 33 points, Hines-Turner added 7 rebounds and 2 steals while Batiste chipped in 12 points and 9 rebounds.
 
The championship capped a 27-1 season for the Spartans, who suffered their only loss to Kapaun Mt. Carmel, which saw its undefeated season come to an end with a 55-52 loss to Bonner Springs in the Class 5A championship game. The title was the first for Collegiate since 2016 and came in Schmitt’s first year as head coach.
 
A year ago, he was at Lakin and took a senior-dominated team into the Class 3A state tournament with a 22-1 record only to see the title hopes dashed in the quarterfinals with a 48-46 loss to Silver Lake.
 
When the job at Collegiate came open with the retirement last spring by Mitch Fiegel, who led the program to six of its state titles from 1993-2016, Schmitt jumped at the opportunity to lead one of the state’s most successful programs.
 
“I learned a lot from those guys back home and because of them I got this opportunity,” Schmitt said. “I wish I’d gotten to experience it with them and they’d gotten to experience this. But I also feel like here, I get to experience it because of what’s been done previously. Coach Fiegel and his staff and the tradition of this school, and then these guys. They carried us and it was fun to be a part of.”
 

 
Despite the loss, Burlington’s season was one to be proud of. The Wildcats lost in the quarterfinals a year ago to eventual champion Hesston in a game that went down to the wire.
 
Losing standout Sage Fefjar, who finished his career ranked top 10 in nearly every career stat category at Burlington, the Wildcats only returned one starter this season. But they plugged those gaps and captured a second straight Pioneer League title and returned to the state tournament, reaching the title game for the first time since capturing the 2004 state title.
 
“I was really proud of our guys for their effort,” Logan said. “At the end of the day, just so proud of these guys for the fight and execution they showed on both ends of the floor.”
 
Sophomore Gaige Navarro led Burlington, which finished 24-5, with 16 points and 12 rebounds. 
 

 
CLASS 3A BOYS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
 
WICHITA COLLEGIATE 55, BURLINGTON 42
 
Burlington … 8 … 10 … 11 … 13 … -- … 42
Wichita Collegiate … 10 … 7 … 19 … 19 … -- … 55
 
Burlington (24-5) – Over 2-9 0-0 6, A. Mautz 1-1 0-0 3, M. Cheever 2-5 0-0 4, Navarro 7-15 0-0 16, Collins 3-9 2-4 8, S. Mautz 2-7 1-1 5, Sharpe 0-0 0-0 0, Birk 0-0 0-0 0, B. Cheever 0-0 0-0 0, Smith 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 17-46 3-5 42.
 
Wichita Collegiate (27-1) – Bond 0-2 2-4 2, Hines-Turner 11-20 8-12 33, Jennings 1-5 0-0 2, Batiste 5-13 2-5 12, S. Issa 1-1 0-0 2, Johnson 1-3 0-0 2, Langston 0-0 0-0 0, Drumright 1-4 0-0 2, J. Issa 0-0 0-0 0, Wiley 0-0 0-0 0, Gentile 0-0 0-0 0, McGarity 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 20-48 12-21 55.
 
3-point goals – Burlington 5-16 (Over 2-5, Navarro 2-5, A. Mautz 1-1, Collins 0-2, S. Mautz 0-3); Collegiate 3-13 (Hines-Turner 3-7, Bond 0-2, Jennings 0-1, Batiste 0-1, Johnson 0-1, Drumright 0-1). Rebounds – Burlington 33 (Navarro 12); Collegiate 27 (Batiste 9). Assists – Burlington 7 (Over 3); Collegiate 5 (Bond 3). Turnovers – Burlington 17, Collegiate 7. Total fouls -- Burlington 19, Collegiate 13. Fouled out – none.