The Fertile-Beltrami Falcon Boys Basketball team had no problems with the Northome-Kelliher Mustangs as they defeated them by a score of 86-43 at the Raplh Englestad Arena in THief River Falls in the Section 8A Quarterfinals.
FIRST HALF –
The Falcons got off to an incredible start to the game, scoring the first 16 points of the contest. Gage Hendrickson was a key contributor in this run, scoring 8 of those points. Northome-Kelliher got a couple of free throws before the Falcons scored eight more points in a row, and that run was capped off by a Steven Sather 3-pointer. The main highlight of the half for the Mustangs came from Jayden Lindley, who hit a long two-pointer to record the 1000th point of his career, but that bucket only cut the lead to 29-5. The lead then became 32-7 with 6:59 to go in the half. The Falcons followed suit again with a 10-5 spurt, capped off again by another 3 pointer from Steven Sather, and this brought the lead to 42-12. The Falcons were getting scoring from many players, with Steven Sather, Bryer Strem and Gage Hendrickson recording double figures in points in the half. The teams exchanged buckets until it was 49-20, when Hendrickson scored and Bryer Strem laid one in off a steal, making it 53-20. Then, Brady Bjerk put in a putback bucket at the horn to give the Falcons a 55-20 lead at the break.
SECOND HALF –
Both teams came out a bit more sluggish in the first few minutes of the second half, with turnovers aplenty on both sides. With 15 minutes left, Bryer Strem hit a pretty finger-roll layup to put the Falcons up 61-22, and that started a run, with Hendrickson and Gullickson hitting shots to put the Falcons up 43. After a three-point play from Lindley, the teams went back-and-forth until Gullickson hit two free throws to put the Falcons up 71-27 with 12 minutes to go. This prompted Falcon coach Neil Steffes to start emptying his bench, but not before Hendrickson hit a three-pointer to put the Falcons up 45, at 74-29. In the final 11 minutes of the game, both teams began to clear their bench, and running time followed soon after. In that period of running time, the Falcons got points from Easton Fredericks, Brennan Gullickson and Russell Chisholm, and these along with other reserves helped the Falcons cruise to an 86-43 victory.
Fertile-Beltrami improves to 26-3 on the season and will play Stephen-Argyle on Wednesday at 7:45 PM. Northome-Kelliher’s season ends with a 16-12 record.
| 1st | 2nd | Final | |
| Northome-Kelliher | 20 | 23 | 43 |
| Fertile-Beltrami | 55 | 31 | 86 |
| For Fertile-Beltrami | Points |
| Gage Henrickson | 24 |
| Drew Gullickson | 19 |
| Bryer Strem | 15 |
| Steven Sather | 13 |
| Brady Bjerk | 4 |
| Kane Oistad | 4 |
| Brennan Gullickson | 2 |
| Easton Fredricks | 2 |
| Russell Chisholm | 2 |
| Connor Haaven | 1 |
| For Kelliher-Northome | Points |
| Jayden Lindley | 10 |
| Anthony Johnson | 9 |
| Aiden Nistler | 6 |
| Landon Heide | 4 |
| Isaac McCurdy | 3 |
| Kyssan Foreseen | 3 |
| Noah Heck | 2 |
| Victor Adams | 2 |
| Jacob McCurdy | 2 |
| Cam Nistler | 2 |
