The Higbee boys won a thriller for the Keytesville Tournament championship, 57-53, Saturday afternoon, snapping a long streak of losses against rival Wellsville-Middletown.

Wellsville was the defending tournament champion after defeating Higbee 67-60 a year ago. The Tigers went on to defeat Higbee a month later in the Class 1 District 10 Tournament on their way to an eventual state semifinal appearance.

“We’ve lost 12 games in three years, and I think they are four of them,” said Higbee coach Tanner Burton. “It’s a kick to the ego a little bit.”

But Burton was all smiles on Saturday after his team rallied back from a five-point deficit in the fourth quarter. Higbee held Wellsville scoreless for nearly three minutes in the bottom half of the final period, taking the lead on a 3-pointer by junior scoring leader Derek Rockett with 2:54 to play.

Higbee increased its lead to seven points over the next two minutes, sinking five of six free-throw chances down the stretch. Wellsville didn’t go down without a fight. Senior Logan Pursifull scored from the paint with 22 seconds on the clock to cut the score to five. Sophomore Carson Huff then sank a 3-pointer with three seconds left. But Higbee stayed enough in front to keep the game out of reach, converting two of six free throws in the last 20 seconds.

“I think it was something to be really proud of the way they finished out,” Burton said. “I think probably the spread should have been better than that. But it’s a head thing at this point. Derek hit free throws. Chad, a senior, hit free throws. Chevy, a senior, hit free throws to close it. I couldn’t be more proud of those guys to finish the way they did.”

The two teams were neck and neck all night, battling to an 11-11 tie after one quarter. Wellsville won a second quarter that saw six lead changes to take a 25-23 lead at halftime.

But despite being down midway through the game, Burton said he had no grand speech to deliver at halftime. Instead, he just focused on adjustments and told his players to keep paying.

“You miss bunnies, miss free throws, you got to fix it,” he said. “The boys… they’re just an exceptional team. We could have probably sat out here and just rested. We go in to talk about some fundamental things with the adjustments to our zone.”

The second half would be just as tight as the first, but Wellsville managed to hold a lead despite losing the third quarter 18-17. Finally, in the fourth quarter, Higbee was able to take the lead for good when Rockett delivered his fourth 3-point shot of the night with under three minutes to play. It would mark the Tigers’ final field goal of the night, as they closed out the game from the free-throw line.

“It just put the wind in our sails,” said Burton about the go-ahead three. “I thought that was him just saying, ‘hey, I got this.’ He’s a big-time player. And that’s the thing when you’ve got a kid who’s a gamer; at some point, he’s just going to turn it and take over.”

Rockett scored a game-high 27 points on the night, just below his average of 30.3.

“I think he’s a hell of a good leader. For him to not only average 30 points a game, he distributes six assists a game,” Burton said. “When you have a kid that can move the ball as well as he does and score the way he does…when he starts hitting shots, people get frustrated.”

Junior Jaxson Hudson followed with nine points for Higbee. Fellow junior Will Spillman also had nine points, all scored from the 3-point arc. Senior Chad Crawford posted eight points and made four of six free-throw shots. Senior Chevy Grimsley rounded out the scoring with five.

For Wellsville, now 8-8 this season, Huff led the team with 23 points, followed by Pursifull with 12.

Higbee is now 18-2 on the season and undefeated in the CLAA Conference. The Tigers travel to Brunswick on Tuesday for the chance to claim the conference title. A win will likely give Higbee the top seed in the conference tournament, which begins February 6.

On Friday, February 3, Higbee will take on Van Far with a 5 p.m. tipoff in the Ramey Basketball Mid-Missouri Invitational hosted by Harrisburg High School. The two-day event hosts teams from the St. Louis area and central Missouri.

Saturday’s win marked Higbee’s second title in three tournaments this season. “For me, I think it was just a good quality win,” said Burton. “The game was physical, and for us to compete at a high level, it’s something to be proud of because that’s how it is the rest of the way. We’ve got to keep winning these games. Tonight, our kids showed grit. We played five guys all night. And so, when you can do that, you’ve got to be smart. You’ve got to work hard. And I think we did that.”