Hayden Laird, Advance playing their best since Christmas Tournament

Leading up to the semifinal round of the Southeast Missourian Christmas tournament a month ago, Advance head coach Dennis Wheetley said, “Anytime we play someone better than us, it's gonna help us.”

The Hornets played Cape Central and Charleston to round out their tournament experience and lost both times by a large margin. However, those defeats stand out as the only losses on Advance’s schedule.

Advance (15-2) is five wins away from reaching 20 wins for the fourth straight season. Before Laird and the deep senior class arrived as freshmen, the Hornets were 12-14 in the 2018-19 season. They played a major role in turning the program around and this may be their best chance at returning to the state tournament.

The Hornets travel to take on Meadow Heights on Friday at 7:30 p.m., as one final road tune-up before the SCAA Conference Tournament on Jan. 23-27 in Dexter.

“I'm feeling pretty good,” Laird said. “In my high school career, we haven't made it this far [with few losses]. Normally we'd have like three or four losses by now but we only got two right now. We're like 15-2 now, so it gives us a lot of confidence.”

Since taking on the big boys, the Hornets proved their coach right by winning seven straight games, most recently a 64-43 win on the road at Scott City on Thursday.

“Playing those big schools and how much bigger they are,” Advance senior Hayden Laird said, “they really teach you to block out, pass when you need to know to make a pump fake. It really helps and we're just a smaller team so playing those big schools really helped us.”

Laid has consistently been among the Hornets' leaders in scoring. He scored 17 points against the Rams. His recent games are evidence of how his tournament experience has led to a stark improvement.

“It's made me help manipulate my game,” Laird said. “I've been working on my up-and-under, so when I play bigger people, they jump and I go under him. It's just helped me all around, helped my passing too.”

Laird was kept away from the basket during the first three quarters of the game. Braylen Carlton picked up the slack by scoring a game-high 18 points to help give the Hornets a 48-32 lead entering the fourth quarter.

The game was already at hand for the Hornets and Laird sealed it with 11 points in the fourth quarter, matching Scott City’s scoring output by himself.

“I just had to adjust to how big they are,” Laird said. “They play football so they're a lot stronger than us. So I just had to make some adjustments and hit pull-up jump shots because I was in foul trouble. I had three fouls coming out of the half, so just make some adjustments.”

Advance senior Colton Silman also scored 15 points, including seven in the first quarter to put the Hornets in cruise control.

Freshman Jackson Gloth led the Rams with 12 points. Brenden Beussink scored seven points in the second quarter. Colin Blaylock, Jaylen Rulo, and Nathan Ham each chipped in six points. Kalen Conner and Luke Umfleet pitched in a bucket to round out the scoring for Scott City (4-12), who will travel to North Pemiscot (0-16) on Friday at 7:30 p.m.