The #6 Indianola boys basketball team guaranteed themselves at least a portion of a Little Hawkeye Conference title with a 62-39 blowout win over Dallas Center-Grimes on Friday, while the shorthanded #13 girls competed hard but couldn’t overcome the #1 Mustangs 42-36 as heard live on 94.3 KNIA.

The Indians boys had an agonizingly slow start, making only three field goals and trailing 13-9 after the first quarter, and halfway through the second quarter the Mustangs hit a three-point shot to get their lead to 18-11. After that, it was all Indians. They went on an 11-0 run to end the quarter, the ballooned into a 25-0 run into the third quarter, and eventually gave up just 16 points after that mark and scored 51 themselves. Head coach Jeff Ebling says the team stuck with it despite missing a lot of shots early, made adjustments, and came out and played their game.

“We were rushing our shots a little bit, we kind of got caught off balance. We had to adjust to the officiating, they were letting us play through contact both ways. And we told the guys they have to adjust to the officials, crews are different each night. We told them after the first quarter we’ll get our way back into it, we always have. But it has to start on the defensive end. When we started locking down defensively our offense started to open up a little bit, got that confidence up. Give DCG credit, they played hard, but tonight we were just better on the defensive end and we got the victory.”

Drew Kingery had 20 points, while Brady Blake had 11.

The shorthanded Indians girls had foul trouble in the first half, but played tremendous defense against the Mustangs, trailing 11-7 after the first and 22-15 at the break. After the Mustangs came out firing in the third quarter to build the lead to 15 it looked like the Indians may have run out of gas, but they came back to get the deficit down to six, but back-to-back three point makes by DCG shut the door on any potential comeback. Brynn Bishop led the team in scoring with 12.

The boys improve to 16-2 on the season and 11-1 in LHC play, while the girls are now 9-10 and 7-5. The teams will take the weekend off and travel to Pella on Tuesday.