SPRINGDALE — Fayetteville and Springdale Har-Ber produced the same two numbers at halftime of Tues- day’s boys game.
Unfortunately for the home team, Fayetteville had 41 and Har-Ber 14. Fayetteville was never threatened and defeated the Wildcats 62-24 in a 7A/6A- West Conference game at Wildcat Arena. Manuale Watkins finished with 17 points for Fayetteville, which jumped to a 16-0 lead in the opening quarter.
It was mostly a fun and loose night for Fayetteville (23-3, 13-0), which clinched the conference champion- ship with a 64-58 victory over Springdale High on Friday. The Bulldogs simply over- powered and outran Har-Ber (9-18, 4-9), which fell behind 26-5 after one quarter.
The Wildcats continued to struggle and failed to match the 26 points Fayetteville had in the opening quarter.
“It was 16-0 before we scored and I burned two time- outs during that time,” Har- Ber coach Adam Simmons said. “You’ve got to be up for a game like that because you don’t have anything to lose. So I was very disappointed in that.”
Fayetteville beat Har-Ber 81-55 in the team’s first meet- ing, but the Wildcats were hoping to keep the rematch closer after beating Rogers Heritage 53-50 on Friday. But the Bulldogs, even with a title in hand, stormed to a big lead and invoked the mercy rule with a running clock to begin the fourth quarter.
Justin Malott finished with eight points for Har-Ber, which failed to score more than nine points in any quar- ter. Watkins scored 17 points to lead 10 players who scored at least one point for the Bulldogs.
“I told the kids there were a million excuses for us not to play well, but we can’t do that,” Fayetteville coach Kyle Adams said. “Har-Ber’s a good basketball team and we just caught them on a night when they didn’t shoot well.”
The only misstep for Fayetteville came in the second quarter when the Bulldogs got a little too fancy for their coach’s liking. Adams jumped off the bench and called timeout after the Bulldogs tried a pass off the backboard during a fast break opportunity. The play failed. “I didn’t like that at all,” Adams said. “They get excited and they’re high- flyers, but that’s not some- thing we’re going to do. We got it corrected, so it won’t happen anymore.”
The fourth quarter was played with reserves after Fayetteville took a 60-21 lead to start the clock running continuously.
•••
Fayetteville 26 15 19 2 — 62
SpringdaleHar-Ber 5 9 7 3 — 24
FAYETTEVILLE (23-3, 13-0): Watkins 17, Waitsman 12, Williamson 8, Smith 7, Paschke 3, McCullough 4, Renner 3, Boyd 3, Renner 2, Carney 2, Gooderl 1.
SPRINGDALE HAR-BER (9-18, 4-9): Malott 8, Rice 3, Davis 3, R. Jones 3, Jester 2, McCoy 2, L. Jones 2, Barrows 1.