Fair Play denies Sparta rally

Sparta, Mo. (For OzarksSportsZone.com)  -- The undefeated Fair Play Hornets beat the Sparta Trojans 67-54 on Friday night.

The Hornets (5-0), who are ranked sixth in the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association poll for Class 1, struggled against a Trojans team that refused to go away.

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Fair Play would jump out to an early 14-7 first quarter lead, but the Trojans would fight back in the second quarter. The Trojans would play even with the Hornets, with each team scoring 21 points making the halftime score 35-28.
 

Both teams played games on Thursday night and it showed in the second half with the teams making mental mistakes. Turnovers and missed shots would plague both teams as they would struggle to score. Fair Play would take an early 15-point lead in the second half but Sparta would respond with a comeback getting the score within 52-48.

The top-ranked Hornets would be lead by senior Lance Schaffer who would have 25 points on the night. 

Schaffer, though, was not impressed by his 25 but rather was focused on his team’s defensive effort.

“We played pretty decent tonight but we need to work on some things, though, like our defense,” he said. “Our rotations were not as good as they needed to be. We can’t turn the ball over; we’ve got to play smarter.” 

Fair Play head coach Lynn Long was content with his team’s effort although he thought they need to play “more smart.”

“We’ve got a good offense, but we’ve got to learn to put away a team when we have the opportunity to.  When we get ahead we can’t just live on that success, we’ve got to keep executing and doing things right,” he said.

“We need to start getting some of our bench guys in there and having them play together with the starters.  They are capable of doing it but we didn’t execute tonight.  We made a lot of silly mistakes.”

Sparta would never get closer than four points on the night but they would continue to play hard until the final horn would sound, with the final score 67-54.

“I’m proud of how hard my team played tonight. We knew how good of a team Fair Play was going in, we knew they could score a lot of points but we were up for the challenge,” said Sparta head coach Ryan Worley. “We’ve kind of had a tendency to let teams make big scoring runs on us.  When we get to be more consistent and not allow this, either by causing turnovers or by us scoring, we are going to be better.” 

Fair Play 14 21 14 18 -67
Sparta  7 21 17 9 -54
Fair Play—Lance Schaffer – 25, Zack Murphy – 16, Jalen Wakefield – 10, Brody Wicklund – 8, Brian Smith – 6, Gordan Gilbertson – 2.
Sparta—Jacob Shipman – 18, Robert May – 12, Austin Casey – 12, Matt Hayes – 6, Levi Dixon – 6.