Mount Pulaski 7th Grade Girls going to state

[December 03, 2021] The Mount Pulaski Honeybears punched their ticket to the IESA 7th Grade Class 2A State Tournament on Wednesday night by defeating Nokomis Junior High 29-26 in the Sectional 6 Championship at Assumption.

Mount Pulaski trailed Nokomis 10-3 after the first quarter and the Honeybears found themselves down 13-9 at the half. A strong third quarter, which included six points from Audrey Cooper and four points from Addison Brown allowed the Honeybears to take a 19-15 lead, after holding Nokomis to just one field goal in the quarter. Brown led the Honeybears with six points in the fourth quarter and despite three threes from Nokomis’ Cloey Dirks, the Honeybears were able to seal the 29-26 win and advance to State.

Addison Brown led the Honeybears with 12 points and 5 rebounds. Audrey Cooper had 9 points and 11 steals.

Mount Pulaski head coach James Anderson was really proud of his team’s effort against the taller team from Nokomis.

“We knew coming into the game that Nokomis liked getting the ball down low,” said Anderson. “We weren’t completely sure how tall and physical their girls were, but we found out pretty quickly in the first half and we made some defensive adjustments heading into the second quarter.”

The Honeybears found themselves in a hole early on, but luckily found a way out.

“After being down 13-5 in the first half, we made a nice little run to finish the half, complete with a Piper Tyson buzzer beater and went into the locker room only down 13-9,” said Anderson.

“Unfortunately, one of our Honeybears, Claire Bobell, rolled her ankle in the first half,” continued Anderson, “so we had to make some additional changes during halftime and we just talked about the offense and defense that we were going to keep running and I reminded the girls what was at stake with just two quarters to play. We came out of halftime on a mission and found ourselves up 15-13 and we didn’t trail for the rest of the game. I think at one time in the fourth quarter we were up by about seven or eight points thanks to some key baskets from Mackenzie Johnston, Addison Brown, and Audrey Cooper. I’m super proud of all of the 7th Grade Honeybears and we’re very excited to be playing in Paris at the 7AA State Finals on Saturday.”

What a great comeback by a group of girls who have been playing together since they were little.

Mount Pulaski (23-1) will play Peoria St. Vincent de Paul (22-4) on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at Paris High School.
The winner will play at 6:30 p.m. later that night in the semifinals.

Scoring

Mount Pulaski 29

Addison Brown 12
Audrey Cooper 9
Claire Bobell 3
Mackenzie Johnston 2
Piper Tyson 2
Olivia Smith 1

Nokomis 26

Mackenzie Mehochko 11
Cloey Dirks 9
Alivia Sabol 6

[Teena Lowery]