White steals the show as Jackets plug Oilers
New KHS guard has 6 steals, leads team with 18 points
![HAYES WHITE (14) goes for a steal against Merritt in a Tuesday matchup. White scored 18 points and six steals in the contest. [Photo by Chris Simon/www.simon-sports-photos. smugmug.com]](https://kingfisherpress.etypegoogle10.com/sites/kingfisherpress.etypegoogle10.com/files/styles/article400/public/91c3d9eafe_Ar00704007.jpg?itok=l69E5Q7m "HAYES WHITE (14) goes for a steal against Merritt in a Tuesday matchup. White scored 18 points and six steals in the contest. [Photo by Chris Simon/www.simon-sports-photos. smugmug.com]")
HAYES WHITE (14) goes for a steal against Merritt in a Tuesday matchup. White scored 18 points and six steals in the contest. [Photo by Chris Simon/www.simon-sports-photos. smugmug.com]
A season ago, the Kingfisher High School boys needed to play exceptionally well to have a chance to win, a feat that wasn’t accomplished often.
A game into his second season as head coach and Colby Connel is ironically happy that his team “didn’t play very well” yet still grabbed a 46-34 victory Tuesday night against Merritt at the APB.
“It’s a nice changeup to not play well and win,” said Connel after the Jackets beat the 2A Oilers, who qualified for state last year and are ranked No. 11 to start this season.
The Jackets shot just 36.7 percent from the field, were out-rebounded by eight and had execution breakdowns on both ends of the floor.
“We competed, though, and that makes up for blunders,” said Connel.
Despite some of the miscues that led to some easy Merritt buckets, Kingfisher was very active on the defensive end.
The Jackets forced 23 turnovers and had 11 steals. The turnovers led to 20 KHS points.
The biggest culprit? Newcomer Hayes White, who had a stellar debut in a Yellowjacket uniform.
He got away with six steals to go with his gamehigh 18 points.
The junior scored six in the first quarter as KHS got out to an 11-3 lead.
The end of that early run saw Cash Laird drill a 3-pointer, prompting a Mer-ritt timeout at 3:20.
The Jacket offense stalled for more than six minutes, but the defense stayed sturdy as they took an 18-10 halftime lead.
White added six more points in the third quarter while Jhett Birdwell, Paytun Burnham and Boomer Mendenhall each made a 3-pointer to help extend the lead to 15 points.
Mendenhall was 2 of 3 from beyond the arc, but his success didn’t reflect that of the team.
Kingfisher went 5 of 18 (27.8 percent) from long range and was just 13 of 31 from inside the arc.
“I didn’t think we executed very well, so the offense just seemed harder and clunkier than it needed to be,” Connel said. “That caused some guys to struggle to find shots.”
Mendenhall finished his night with eight points and Laird scored seven. Birdwell finished with five points. Merritt was paced by Luke Peffer’s 15 points. The 6-foot-7 post player also had a game-high 10 boards.