Advance boys basketball team falls to Meadville in Class 1 final four

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Things were going how the Advance boys basketball had envisioned for the first 16 minutes of a Class 1 semifinal against Meadville on Thursday at Mizzou Arena.

After an up and down season, the Hornets were holding a lead instead of fighting back from a deficit.

But after leading by as many as 12 points midway through the second quarter, the Hornets advantage quickly slipped to just one point heading into the fourth.

The Eagles hit a 3-pointer in the first 30 seconds of the final quarter and never looked back on their way to a 63-51 victory over Advance and a chance to play for a state title.

"They outplayed us in the second half," Advance coach Bubba Wheetley said. "I thought they outhustled us in the second half, out-rebounded us in the second half and probably wanted it a little worse. I don't know, but they made shots. I got on them pretty hard tonight, but like I told them, 'They outplayed us tonight. They beat us, and that's why they're 31-0.'"

Advance will play Leeton in the third-place game at 2:30 p.m. today.

After holding its largest lead of the game at 25-13 with 5:48 remaining in the second, Advance was held to just two points for the remainder of the half and watched Meadville close out the second on a 5-0 run.

The Eagles' biggest shot of the first half came with under five seconds to play in the second when Logan Newlin grabbed an offensive rebound and scored a layup as time expired to cut the Hornets' lead to 27-20 at the break.

"I think it was a much-needed bucket," Meadville coach Drew Neir said. "Don't get me wrong, it was a huge bucket. It gave us a little bit of momentum going into the half, but the biggest thing for us to do at halftime was just to calm down a little bit and understand where we needed to get the ball and when it needed to be there. I thought offensively we got a little stagnant. We would have two really good passes, and then we would kind of hold it and they would recover and we'd have to go back into it all again. I said 'We're just one pass away here.' Defensively we made a couple adjustments to limit [Advance senior Dalton Wilson's] penetration towards the rim. That played a crucial part to that second half."

Newlins' bucket may have been the Hornets' downfall, according to Advance sophomore Preston Wuebker.

"We were a little down," Wuebker said about Advance's mood in the locker room at halftime. "We thought we should've gotten the defensive rebound and just held it till the buzzer went off, but he got the rebound and put it back in. I don't think we rebounded very well after that."

In the second half, the Hornets were outrebounded 19-5 and allowed Meadville to score 10 second-chance points.

"I really didn't see them change anything up, they were just blocking out better," Advance sophomore Dawson Mayo said. "Their big guys did a good job of knocking me around down there and at times I couldn't even turn around to see a rebound coming. Even on the offensive side they were tough to penetrate in the second half."

Meadville's Dalton Palmer had a game-high 19 points, including six 3-pointers in the Eagles' win.

The senior scored 13 second-half points on four 3-pointers and a free throw.

With 5:18 remaining in the third and his team trailing 38-32, Palmer hit a 3 to spark an 11-4 run capped by his fourth trey of the game to pull the Eagles within one heading into the fourth.

At the start of the final quarter, Palmer went back to work hitting another 3-pointer 30 seconds in to give Meadville its first lead of the game.

"Dalton's one of the best streak shooters that I've seen and gotten to be a part of," Nier said. "When he is able to free himself up and get good looks and his teammates recognize and he starts hitting, it lifts our whole team up -- not just offensively but defensively as well. We really get fired up, our crowd gets into it, and these kids feed off that. I thought that crowd noise and that defensive pressure affected these guys in the second half."

Palmer was 6 of 11 from behind the arc and added one assist and two rebounds.

"He just made shots, and we didn't," Wheetley said. "And we had some good looks, we just couldn't get them to go down. When you have two good teams that are pretty close, it's whoever makes those shots is going to win. We beat Gideon that way, we beat South Iron that way and this team beat us that way. That's the way it goes sometimes."

The Eagles held Advance scoreless for the first four minutes of the fourth and added eight free throws in the final two minutes.

Dalton Wilson finished with 16 points to lead Advance.

Wheetley said Advance will have to make quick turnaround in an attempt to end its season with a win.

"Not at all where we'd like to be, but we can't do much about that," Wheetley said. "These guys are down right now, but we'll come out ready to play tomorrow."

Meadville 11 9 21 22 -- 63

Advance 20 7 15 9 -- 51

MEADVILLE (63) -- Dalton Palmer 19, Cade Shifflett 15, Logan Newlin 10, Blake Burkholder 10, T.J. Schmitz 9. FG 20, FT 17-19, F 13. (3-pointers: Palmer 6. Fouled out: none.)

ADVANCE (51) -- Dalton Wilson 16, Brian Whitson 12, Preston Wuebker 11, Austin Ladd 7, Armani Vermillion 3, Dawson Mayo 2. FG 19, FT 9-12, F 15. (3-pointers: Whitson 4. Fouled out: none.)