Sophomore Mitch Wilkinson was the youthful spark FHC received to push them past the Hawks of FHE Friday night 49-38. After finishing with ten points, Mitch settled in and started to find his shot early on.

“During the first half, I started to feel good and started to make more shots,” Mitch said. “I built that confidence and just came out hot. Once we got going, we couldn’t be stopped.”

Mitch had a big shot from beyond the arc early in the second quarter along with another bucket to put FHC up by two towards the end of the second. The Rangers went into the locker room tied up at 22 at the half.

Senior captain Ty George knew that the aggressiveness of the offense wasn’t there as a team in the first 16 minutes.

“It’s all aggressiveness,” said Ty, who finished with 18 points. “As a team, we didn’t have many and that starts with me. I’m one of our leaders and scorers, so I just have to look right out of the gate to be aggressive.”

Ty had a huge second half and gave FHC 18 of their 27 second-half points. A huge lay-up followed by a foul sent Ty to the line for a three-point play. After sinking the free throw, FHC found themselves up by five. FHC went on a seven-point run at the end of the third putting them up by seven going into the final eight minutes.

FHE had huge problems with the Rangers zone defense in the fourth, resulting in turnover after turnover. FHC capitalized on countless trips, slowly increasing their lead and keeping the Hawks out of reach. The game never got back to within four or less in the entirety of the fourth.

Head coach Ken George thought his team was effective with their zone to support the slow offense night.

“I thought our guys in our zone were pretty active in the second half and made it hard on them,” said George, who improves to 7-0 all-time against FHE. “To hold them to 16 in the second half is how you finally pull away from someone.”

After FHC came out and started to build a lead, the deficit started to play into the minds of the Hawks shooters and put more and more pressure to score.

“Once we got ahead we were really able to play that zone,” said George, picking up his 324th career win on Friday night. “There is a little shot clock in their head going off. It’s the mentality of, ‘we’re down by seven and we need to shoot at some point.’ That just makes the zone that much more effective.”

Junior Tate Hallock played a big role on defense and in the paint for FHC late in the game.

“He’s just such a great athlete,” Ty said. “He hasn’t played a ton of basketball in his life, but once the skillset matches up with his athleticism he can be really special.”

Tate finished with just three points but made his mark with six rebounds and a pair of steals.

The Rangers have yet to play their best game and need to continue to work on their full game effectiveness to make a statement in the OK white this season.

“[In] the second half we regathered and talked about how we needed to come out right now, no more waiting,” Ty said. “We need to have that urgency right out of the gate. I think a lot of that is nerves, being 0-2 and needing to win this game, but we’re done with that and it definitely will feel good to have that win under our belts.”

Despite the little errors Friday night, Coach George is just simply happy to get a win.

“I’m just really excited to win,” George said. “Winning is really hard because they’re trying to win too. We put a lot of hours into this win and we had a lot of preparation defensively. It was far from perfect– far from pretty, but I’ve been through enough losses that when you get a win regardless of all the little things, I’m going to really enjoy it.”