Micah Foss scored 21 points to lead the Comets.  He also had 8 rebounds, 3 assists and 5 steals.  Thomas Zwiers and Evan Gould added 16 and 12 points, respectively.  Zwiers also had 5 rebounds and 4 assists, while Zeke Ihrke distributed 4 assists and had a pair of steals.  Joel Quam added 3 steals, 4 rebounds and 4 points.

“Tale of two halves tonight,” stated Hillcrest Head Coach Ryan Garvin.  “We got into foul trouble early, which kept Micah, Thomas, Zeke and Joel off the floor for extended minutes in the first half. We didn't respond very quickly to how the referees were calling the game. It was a good learning opportunity for us. In the second half we only took 5 threes - and didn't hit any of them - but we clearly learned where we were going to get our points from. Our passing, our cutting looked better in the second half. We played much freer. We only committed 4 turnovers in the second half, which obviously gives us more opportunities to score and keeps the ball out of Underwood's hands.  I was very proud of the way our guys talked through the first half in the locker room. They responded well to the (albeit) minor adversity. I was also very impressed with how Caden Fischer defended in the post tonight. He played some big minutes tonight against some big boys and he held his own, played physical. It was also great to have Kaleb Swensen back tonight after a pretty bad football injury. He played some very meaningful minutes for us tonight.”

Leaders for the Rockets were Krosby Aasness with 14, Braden Thorson with 13 and Winston Heifort with 11.

“We really went out there and battled tonight,” said Head Coach Evan Meece of the Rockets.  “The score was not indicative of how close the game really was.  It was a physical game on both ends of the court and Hillcrest ended up on the winning side of things.  Our first half was really solid and then we went on a few lulls in the second half and couldn’t get the ball movement to get our good looks.  One thing that hurt us the most tonight was giving up too many offensive rebounds.  We need to hammer down on getting rebounds and fine tune our offensive strategy moving forward.”

Hillcrest (2-5) will host Park Christian School on Saturday night before playing three straight road games next week.

Underwood (1-9) will host Battle Lake on Tuesday night and Wheaton/Herman-Norcross on Thursday.