With back-to-back losses, the regular season didn’t end the way that Mid-Prairie wanted it to, but the Golden Hawks are still excited about the opportunities ahead in the postseason. 

Mid-Prairie will host quarterfinal and semifinal matchups in 3A Region 4. The Golden Hawks split a pair of games in the regular season with the region’s top seed, West Liberty. Mid-Prairie received the second seed in the region. 

“That’s the hard work that our team has put in over the course of the year, to earn that two seed and an opportunity to play at home,” Mid-Prairie coach Danny Hershberger said. 

“The one seed is a really good team but a team that we’ve beaten. So anytime that you’re the two seed in your bracket and you have a one seed that you’ve competed well against, it’s obviously exciting for us.”

Mid-Prairie (13-8) swept the season series with it’s quarterfinal opponent, Tipton (2-18). 

Maddie Nonnenmann scored 23 points in the last matchup, but the Golden Hawks had just four points in the fourth quarter of the 48-43 win. 

Kyra Shaull scored half of her 20 points from the free throw line for Tipton in the loss. 

“They have a really good freshman post player that’s been playing more and more for them as the season has gone on. And so we have to find a way to defend her a little bit better than we did last time out,”Hershberger said. 

“We’re familiar with them, they’re familiar with us, it’s just comes down to that to being able to execute what we want to do.”

Mid-Prairie is looking to shake off a couple tough losses over the past week. The Golden Hawks scored just 18 total points the second halves of their last two regular season games. 

“We have some time this week to kind of regroup and get back to some fundamental things that we haven’t had a lot of time to work on,” Hershberger said.  “It’s a great opportunity to kind of refresh, restart, and then get back to doing some of the basic fundamental mental things we need to do to be successful.”

West Branch 43, Mid-Prairie 28

The Golden Hawks hit five 3-pointers in the second quarter at West Branch on Friday, but struggled offensively in the second half of a 43-28 loss. 

Mid-Prairie scored just seven points in the second half and did not have a field goal for the first 15 minutes of play after halftime. 

“I felt like we were getting some pretty good looks, we were open in the middle and high post and we were getting good looks on threes,” Mid-Prairie coach Danny Hershberger said after the game. “ They just weren’t going in. It’s one of those things where you see a couple where you feel like you got off a good shot and it didn’t go in — when it happens again and again, it starts to wear on you a little bit.”

Maddie Nonnenmann led the Golden Hawks with 11. She scored in the first quarter to cut the West Branch lead to 4-2, which would be the only 2-point field goal of the game for Mid-Prairie. Nonnenmann, Amara Jones and Cana Rediger each made a pair of 3-pointers in the first half as the Golden Hawks cut a 23-12 lead down to 25-21 at the half. Rediger had the Golden Hawks’ only field goal of the second half and finished with nine. 

Wilton 67, Mid-Prairie 36

Mid-Prairie was unable to stop the Beaver offense during the second quarter of a 67-36 loss to Wilton on Tuesday. 

Wilton scored 27 points in the second quarter and then held Mid-Prairie to just 11 points after halftime. 

“We weren’t doing a great job of rebounding the ball, we gave up a few offensive rebounds and they were getting some easy layups off of that,” Mid-Prairie coach Danny Hershberger said. “I thought their pressure bothered us a little bit. We had a little bit of trouble getting the ball through their press. They were able to get some deflections, get out in front and get some layups off of that as well.”

Charlotte Brown, who had two points in Mid-Prairie’s 43-38 win, scored 22 in the rematch. Kelsey Drake led the Beavers with 31. 

Nora Pennington had nine points and three steals for the Golden Hawks. Amara Jones had six points and also stole the ball three times. Maddie Nonnenmann led Mid-Prairie with 14 points.