Barstow rolls to Missouri Class 3 quarterfinals victory over Lafayette County
It wasn’t so much a storm that the Barstow Knights had to weather on their way to a Missouri Class 3 quarterfinal win as it was a stiff breeze.
The Lafayette County Huskers, fueled with the hopes of a monumental upset, scored seven of the game’s first nine points. The Knights, familiar with taking a team’s best punch, then dominated the final 29 minutes and 44 seconds of the contest.
Barstow put together a pair of 18-0 runs, led by as many as 39 points and earned its second straight trip to the state semifinals with a 67-45 win at Lee’s Summit High School
“We’ve had it all season, that big bulls-eye on our chest,” Barstow coach Billy Thomas said. “(Lafayette County) came out with a lot of passion and energy, and our thing all year has been to stay calm. We stay the course, and our abilities and talents take over.”
The Knights, 27-2 with losses to Lawrence and Columbia Hickman, now ready themselves for a semifinal rematch with College Prep at Madison on Thursday at 5 p.m. in Columbia. Barstow fell in last year’s state title game to Cardinal Ritter.
“This is what we’ve been looking for all year,” said Barstow junior Shea Rush, who finished with 17 points. “Last year we came up four minutes short, and that’s kind of been our motto. We’ve worked all year to get back to those last four minutes, and now we’re one step closer.”
The Knights got a dominant effort from 6-foot-7 junior Jeriah Horne, who poured in a game-high 33 points on 15-of-21 shooting from the field.
Horne, showcasing a powerful inside game and a smooth jumper, had 13 in the first quarter and 12 in the third quarter before resting for the game’s final 8 minutes with the Knights comfortably ahead.
“I owe it all to my teammates,” Horne said. “They’re looking for me all the time. They trust in me, and I trust in them. That’s the power of our team. It’s a completely unselfish team that we have.”
Lafayette, 28-2, hung with the Knights for the first 6 minutes, but Barstow ended the first quarter with a 9-2 run and then opened the second quarter by scoring 18 straight. The Huskers finally ended the run with Blaine Wheeler’s trey, but it was the only points they would find in the quarter.
Barstow ended the third quarter with a 14-0 run and had a 39-point lead by the time the reserves were in the game for good and the mercy rule was in play.
“It starts with our defense,” Thomas said. “We get out and contest everything … we force teams to play a little faster and when we do that, we’ve got a guy who is one of the best in the state at pushing the ball, and we’ve got some of the best athletes running on the wing.”
All of Barstow’s points and the majority of its playing minutes came from juniors and sophomores, a group that has been tasked with trying to improve on last year’s second-place finish at state. They’re now two wins away from that goal.
“I guess you could say there’s been some pressure on us how we have the same team as last year and we’re going to be better,” Horne said. “The thing about this team is we didn’t worry about what anyone was saying, we’ve just focused on ourselves and doing what we need to do every game.”
This story was originally published March 7, 2015 at 8:20 PM with the headline "Barstow rolls to Missouri Class 3 quarterfinals victory over Lafayette County."