Basketball season is over in Randolph

Alan Dale

Randolph Times

RANDOLPH — The Randolph Cardinals saw their basketball season come to an end with a competitive, 50-40 defeat to Hartington-Newcastle last week.

The loss ended the campaign at 7-15, but what’s lost in that number is the 1-10 start the team overcame and even the improvement against the Wildcats, having lost by 30 points only three days earlier in the regular season finale.

“We played much better against them than we did last Friday,” Randolph head coach Jim Hixson said after the Feb. 22 defeat at Laurel-Concord-Coleridge. “We stepped up our defense considerably.  In the previous game, they shot 60 percent from the floor and 47 percent from behind the 3-point line.  Monday, they shot 39 percent from the field and 27 percent on threes.

“We also did a good job not turning the ball over, with only 10 turnovers.  I was very proud of the boys efforts. They were able to come back from a five-point halftime deficit to take a one-point lead going to the fourth quarter.”

Randolph was undone by poor free throw shooting as it went one-for-six over the final eight minutes. Justin Haselhorst led the way with 20 points.

Despite the defeat, Hixson was pleased with the way the Cardinals overcame their early selves to become a competitive squad.

“Entering the year, we only had one player that really had any appreciable experience,” Hixson said. “Our schedule to begin is very rigorous. Several of the losses (early on) were by wide margins.  The second half of the season saw us go 6-6 over our last 12 games and were very competitive in a couple of those losses.

“Our kids just kept working all year and giving great effort on the court which paid off in the second part of the season.”

Now, Hixson’s first season will lead to higher expectations next fall and a turning of the dial in a hoped-for improved direction after losing four senior starters for the second straight year.

“We will be starting from scratch again,” Hixson said. “We do have some promising athletes in our program however many of them had not seen much playing time.  They will be called upon next year to step up to the Varsity level.

“One of my points of emphasis during the off season will be our strength program.  We have some skinny kids that could use some size and strength to compete at a higher level.”

Four of those who did, were the seniors who rose to improve their play as a group and give themselves something positive to hold onto as they move on in their lives and away from Randolph basketball.

“Once they started believing in themselves and taking basketball seriously the success came,” Hixson said. “I hope that this season taught them that taking a goal seriously and working hard for it, leads to success.  It applies to their lives outside of athletics also.

“I am proud of what they accomplished this year but will be prouder to see the men they become.”

Junior Collyn Beal will be one of those underclassmen who will step into a senior role similar to this year, but with the advantage of playing a lot of valuable minutes.

“We finished as strong as we could even if we couldn’t get the W,” Beal said. “We were pretty nervous after losing to Hartington in basically a blow out before that. With the first half of our season, it brought our spirits really low. At the beginning of the year, it was pretty rough and had no one besides Justin that had a varsity experience, so we didn’t have a lot of confidence.

“After Christmas break, the coaches got sick of us messing around in practice, so we got straightened up and just got in our heads and pushed us harder. Our big boy Sam Korth start popping off (in games) and that helped us a lot.”

Beal did say the playoff loss was a rough one to take, but the idea that the season ended on an upswing was a win by its own rights.

“I think next year we will be a lot stronger because we will have a lot more players who either were starting or were playing better and we have some sophomores that are pretty good,” Beal said. “We are going to do a lot better next year and be able to get it going a lot faster.”

Stay in the know!

To get news alerts on your cell phone, get the Cedar County News app in the ITunes store or  in the Google Play Store.