4A-II boys: Hayden routs Collegiate for third place

After Friday night’s loss to Pratt, top-seeded Collegiate ran into an even-hotter Topeka Hayden team on Saturday in the Class 4A-II boys third-place game.

Hayden shot better than 60 percent in both halves of a 92-72 victory.

“They came out on fire, and I thought, ‘OK, we’re going to find out what we’re made of here,’ ” coach Mitch Fiegel said. “We had an opportunity to just lay down and let them blow us out, and late in the third quarter, we’re down 10 and I think it’s manageable.

“But they got made a couple plays and got that little spurt they needed to get away from us.

“No disrespect to Holcomb (which beat Hayden in overtime Friday in the semifinals) – they have a great team – but I felt like we were playing the best team in the state (Saturday). They just didn’t play in the championship game.”

Hayden (18-7) made 69 percent of its first-half shots, including 7 of 11 three-pointers. The Wildcats made 15 of 24 shots after halftime (62 percent) and 66 percent for the game.

Fiegel acknowledged it’s pretty hard to mount a comeback when the opponent is that hot.

“Hayden didn’t shoot it that well the first two nights,” he said. “That’s why they’re in this (third-place) game.”

Hayden has a top-flight offensive player in 6-foot-4 junior Zach Harvey (19 points), but the Wildcats’ X-factor was 6-2 sophomore reserve Levi Braun, who made five three-pointers and finished with 21 points.

“He had a night, didn’t he?” Fiegel said. “That’s the second night in a row that people have come off the bench and just torched us. If that’s going to happen, you’re going to have to really battle.”

Collegiate returns everyone but seniors Cooper Root, Elijah Bradley and Keandre Ashley.

“Coop, he’s my battler. He’ll go down as one of my all-time favorites, no doubt,” Fiegel said. “Coop, Elijah and Keandre were all fabulous as seniors and also as human beings. They’re great kids.

“If you had told me a year ago on this day, graduating eight seniors, that we were going to go 19-1 and have an opportunity to legitimately compete for a state championship, I would have said, ‘Well, that sounds pretty good, but I don’t know about that.’ ”

This story was originally published March 11, 2017 at 5:06 PM with the headline "4A-II boys: Hayden routs Collegiate for third place."