MITCHELL — One point.
That’s all the Mitchell High School boys basketball team needed to send Saturday’s season-opener against Huron to overtime with 1.2 seconds to play.
The Kernels hung around all night, despite a forgetful first quarter and a few scoring droughts along the way, but they still needed just one point when Derek Factor stepped to the free-throw line with the chance to tie the game.
Factor’s shot looked true, but it hit the back of the rim and bounced out, giving the Tigers a 49-48 win in a game where the Kernels shot just 12 of 22 from the charity stripe.
“People are going to say, ‘If we made those free throws at the end we would have won,’ but what they don’t remember is we missed nine other ones throughout the game,” MHS head coach Todd Neuendorf said. “...Everyone always remembers the last one. It takes a lot of guts to go to the rim on a game-winning shot and it takes even more guts to stand up there (at the free-throw line) with everybody looking at you.”
When the horn sounded at the end of the first quarter, most fans inside the Corn Palace likely would not have believed Mitchell had a chance to tie it at the end of the game.
Huron took a 13-0 lead to start and the Kernels didn’t get on the board until Carter Jacobsen hit a foul line jumper with 1:11 left in the quarter as the Tigers led 15-5 after one.
Mitchell wasn’t down for long, though, as a seemingly different team came out to start the second quarter and quickly erased the deficit with an 11-2 run in the first 2:31 and even took the lead at one point before heading into halftime down 25-23.
“I don’t think anything changed, we just kept telling the kids to settle down,” Neuendorf said. “They were nervous and scared. Once we settled down, things came a little bit. When you see that first one go in, there’s a big sigh of relief.”
Mitchell had its share of scoring droughts throughout the game, as both teams struggled to score consistently. The Kernels shot 36.6 percent from the field, while Huron connected on just 31.6 percent of its attempts.
The Tigers were able to hit Mitchell with a couple flurries, however, pushing the lead to seven at the end of the third quarter and again with three minutes to play following a thunderous left-handed dunk by Teegan Evers.
The Kernels were able to weather the storm on both occasions and claw back into the game. After scoring just one point in the entire game, Kiel Nelson banked in a 3-pointer from the wing and came back moments later to drain another from the corner, before freshman Caden Hinker tied the game on a bomb of his own with less than a minute to play.
“You can’t simulate game speed, so I think kids were rushing shots the whole game,” Neuendorf said. “I think you’ll see that improve throughout the year. I do think we have good shooters.”
Factor bolted down the floor coming out of a timeout following a go-ahead basket by Huron’s Nathan Boehrns with 6.6 seconds left, looking to tie the game.
That go-ahead basket came after multiple failed opportunities to corral a rebound, which cost Mitchell on several occasions in the waning moments.
“That was the big difference down the stretch, with those couple possessions where they got the offensive rebound,” Neuendorf said. “I wish we could have had it, because I had something drawn up for it.”
Jacobsen led the Kernels with 15 points and seven rebounds, while Hinker added 14 points and 10 rebounds and Factor had eight points, seven rebounds, five assists and two steals. Mitchell (0-1) hosts Rapid City Central on Friday.
Kobe Busch had 16 points and 12 rebounds and Evers added 16 points and four steals for Huron (1-1), which hosts Rapid City Stevens on Friday.
