Bell City boys basketball team falters down the stretch

DELTA -- Bell City boys basketball coach Nate Wills knew that the Richland Rebels would create matchup problems for his team entering their Class 1 District 2 quarterfinal Monday at Delta High School.

Richland's star guard Ryan Kleffer, who is listed at 6 foot 3, is taller than the Cubs' tallest post player. The Rebels also have 6-11 center Richard Forshee on their roster.

Richland was able to regularly use that advantage inside in the second half on its way to a 78-60 victory.

"With his kind of size on the perimeter and the kind of size they have on the interior, it's a difficult matchup when our tallest guy is 6 foot 2," Wills said, referring to Kleffer. "They've got a guard that's 6-2, and we've got a post player that's 6-2, so we were at a disadvantage from the get-go. We hung in there for a while. I think we just couldn't sustain."

Bell City jumped out to a 5-0 lead as Richland missed its first seven shots from the field, and the Cubs led 14-11 after the first quarter.

Kleffer did not score his first points until there was less than a minute left in the first quarter but finished with 26 points in the game.

"Being in the same conference, we know what a good scorer he is," Wills said. "He's a difficult matchup for us because we don't have guards that size."

The Cubs took their final lead at 35-34 with 5 minutes, 22 seconds left in the third quarter before Richland answered with a 10-0 run to take control of the game.

Bell City missed five consecutive shots during the Rebels' run.

"In the third quarter, we started missing a lot of shots," Willis said. "We're not a great shooting team, and their coaching staff did a good job. They know we're not a good shooting team, so they kind of collapsed everything in close where we couldn't get anything in the paint and they let us have the outside shot, which we couldn't knock down tonight."

Richland will face top-seed Scott County Central, which received a bye in the quarterfinal round, at 6 p.m. Tuesday while Bell City's season ended.

"We hung in there, and we stuck to the game plan for the most part," Wills said. "We did what we wanted to coming into it. We just couldn't sustain keeping them out of the inside. A lot of their points came from inside the paint. Then they got some confidence and started hitting some outside shots. We just couldn't keep up."

Bell City 14 11 18 17 -- 60

Richland 11 19 21 27 -- 78

BELL CITY (60) -- Terence Liggins 3, Jerad Yates 16, Terrance Johnson 19, Alan Michael Hess 2, Josh Overbey 7, Shane Hughes 5, Chris Carpenter 2, McKenzie Vines 6. FG 25, FT 5-9, F 21. (3-pointers: Liggins 1, Yates 1, Johnson 3. Fouled out: none)

RICHLAND (78) -- Parker Evans 5, Jacob Hyten 15, Aaron Gilbert 9, Ryan Kleffer 26, Nicholas Daniels 4, Richard Forshee 16. FG 29, FT 15-29, F 11. (3-pointers: Hyten 1, Kleffer 1. Fouled out: none)