Second half surge: Bulldogs beat Columbus

DIKE - Trailing 49-40 at half, Hampton-Dumont's boys basketball team needed no halftime talk from coach Heath Walton to motivate itself.

The Bulldogs outscored Waterloo Columbus 50-17 in the second half to post a 90-66 win in the Class 2A District 5 opening round game at Dike-New Hartford High School.

Charlie Flickinger scored a team-high 29 points, Coleton Barz finished with 18 and Parker Claypool added 17 despite foul trouble as H-D improved to 12-9.

"I don't know, I just like big games," Flickinger said of having his shots go down. "It's fun to play in, so I just kind of embrace it."

Columbus twins Kyle and Beau McMahon had combined for 42 of their team's 49 points by half. The rest of the way, Kyle McMahon scored four points and Beau McMahon, none.

"They came out and shot the ball extremely well in the first half," Walton said. "The second half we felt like we played consistent, rebounded the ball well the second half and offensively were patient; weren't trying to force to get everything back at once, so I felt good to our reaction to their shooting."

Cole Miller had 10 of his 11 rebounds in the second half, half on each end of the floor. The Bulldogs left Columbus with one-shot-and-done for the whole second half with 20 of the team's 34 boards for the game. Miller nearly had an unconventional double-double, adding a team-high nine assists.

After that hot-shooting start, the Sailors cooled off considerably. They were 5-of-22 from the field in the second half.

"In a way, yeah (we were hoping for a cool-down)," Flickinger said. "But we knew that if they continued to shoot like that, we were going to have to do better defense and play better offense.

"The way they were shooting in the first half, I didn't know it was going to be that big of a spread, but when shots stop falling for a team, it's a little harder to stay in a game where we shot really well in the second half."

And while Columbus cooled off, H-D heated up. The Bulldogs were 32-of-53 from the field for 60 percent.

The win sets up a meeting with formerly No. 1 Aplington-Parkersburg, which experienced its first loss of the season last week to Class 1A top-ranked Gladbrook-Reinbeck.

"We have to come out with mentality of not being scared of them," Flickinger said. "We have to execute what we want to and play our game, so they're very good. We're going to take it and have a good game."

Because of this week's deadline, for a complete story on this game, see the Feb. 25 print edition of the Hampton Chronicle.