Sizzling shooting night carries Gibault Hawks past Waterloo

The Gibault Hawks had to know it was a good night when the total of their 12 3-pointers equaled the final score of their opponent.

Gibault broke open a close game against crosstown rival Waterloo with a sizzling second quarter and rolled to an 80-36 victory over the Bulldogs as the Hawks won for the sixth time in eight games.

Key performers

Gibault’s Trevor Davis and Brian Deterding had 16 points each and Jacob Rueter tossed in four 3-pointers among his 14 points and also contributed 10 assists. The Hawks (18-8) also got 11 points and 12 rebounds from Collin Kessler in a game that neither coach expected to be quite so lopsided.

“We didn’t expect it,” Gibault coach Dennis Rueter said. “Obviously I’d have been disappointed if we lost, we’re a better team, but I did not expect that. We shot it really well.”

Contributing to the scoring differential was Gibault sinking 12 of its 20 3-point attempts and draining 22 of 33 shots overall (67 percent) in the second and third quarters.

“A decent number of them were threes, too,” Coach Rueter said and he was correct as the Hawks drained eight from beyond the 3-point arc in the second and third quarters. “They were just going. We’d rather get it inside and we’ve been really inside-oriented lately. We’ve really been pounding it in to Brian (Deterding) and Trevor (Davis), but tonight we got off to a good start and got ahead, made some threes.”

The Hawks led 13-8 after the first quarter, but outscored Waterloo (6-18) 27-8 in the second quarter to grab a 40-16 halftime lead. The margin grew to 66-30 after three quarters.

Garrett Rueter added three 3-pointers for his nine points for Gibault.

Waterloo coach Dane Walter was just as surprised as his Gibault coaching counterpart at the final margin of victory. Walter expected a much better outing.

“I honestly did,” he said. “I watched these guys play a few times this year and I knew they were a good team, but we didn’t bring it. We didn’t bring it tonight.”

Waterloo jumped out to a 5-0 lead and that proved to be the lone early highlight for the Bulldogs, who were outscored 40-11 by the Hawks through the rest of the opening half.

Deterding had 12 points in the first half while Davis had 10 and Collin Kessler added nine.

“They shot the ball well and they typically do have a good shot selection and ball movement,” Walter said. “They can get those shots to fall land they did tonight.”

Waterloo got 13 points from Griffin Lenhardt and nine from Ben Huels.

Building momentum

Gibault has won six of its last eight games as the Hawks, who are 12th in the latest Class 1A state rankings, head down the stretch toward the playoffs.

The only losses in that span were to state-ranked Okawville and Woodlawn. The Hawks split two games with Okawville this season.

“We feel like we’ve played pretty well,” Rueter said. “We were obviously concerned after Okawville, but two nights earlier we played about as good as we can play against Wesclin and we won by 30.

“With us, we really can’t fall behind against good teams. We got behind Okawville by 10 and that’s not a good situation for us.”

This story was originally published February 9, 2016 at 9:50 PM with the headline "Sizzling shooting night carries Gibault Hawks past Waterloo."