M-SJHS seventh grade basketball season comes to an end
By Fred Kroner
The season ended for the Mahomet-Seymour seventh-grade boys’ basketball team on Saturday (Jan. 22) at Champaign Jefferson.
Coming off a 12-day COVID-related layoff, the Bulldogs defeated sixth-seeded Champaign Franklin in the quarterfinals of a Class 4A IESA regional tournament, 38-30.
Paxson O’Malley led M-S with 14 points, including a 5-for-6 showing from the free throw line. Eli Dyer contributed a season-high 10 points, including making 8-of-10 free throws.
Overall, M-S was 13-for-18 on free throws.
Ben Ohms sank two three-point shots and tallied six points as did Parker Henry. The other two Bulldog points came from Landon Busch.
Later in the day, the third-seeded Bulldogs were matched up with the host school, second-seeded Jefferson, and dropped a 40-21 decision.
Ohms and Silas Campion were the leading M-S scorers with four points apiece.
Other Bulldog points came from Coy Benway (two), Dyer (two), Jesiah Hall-Harpst (two), Busch (three), O’Malley (three) and Henry (one).
M-S finishes the season with a 13-7 overall record.
For the season, O’Malley led – or shared – the team in scoring in 11 games. Bryson Tiefenthaler was the leader in five games, followed by Campion (two games), Henry (two games), Ohms (two games) and Dyer (one game).
O’Malley registered the top individual scoring game for the seventh-graders, 25 points. He also led the team in scoring with 200 points, a 10.0 per-game average.
He was one of 15 Bulldogs who scored points this season. The others were: Tiefenthaler (96 points), Dyer (84 points), Henry (84 points), Benway (49 points), Ohms (45 points), Busch (40 points), Braylen McDermand (30 points), Campion (26 points), Hall-Harpst (10 points), Joe Roller (9 points), Colton Arbogast (7 points), Nick Brauer (7 points), Andrew Kassem (5 points) and Josiah Beacham (2 points).
The eighth-grade Bulldogs (14-5) will start their postseason journey at home in an IESA Class 4A regional semifinal game at 4:30 p.m. on Monday (Jan. 31) against either fourth-seeded Jefferson or fifth-seeded Rantoul Eater. M-S is the No. 1 regional seed and will be coming off an 18-day COVID-related layoff in its next game.
