SOUTH WAYNE — Black Hawk emerged victorious in the opening round of the WIAA Division 5 boys basketball playoffs thanks to a hot start with limited opportunities.

“We pushed the ball offensively in that first half, and I thought we played really well. I thought in that second half we slowed it down a bit and we didn’t score as much,” Warriors coach Trent Wyssbrod said after his team’s 60-44 victory March 3.

Pecatonica won the opening tip and bled 94 seconds off the clock before a turnover gave Black Hawk the ball. After a quick missed shot by the Warriors, Avery Baumgartner grabbed a rebound and hit a jumper just over two minutes into the game. 

The Vikings again slowed it down and held onto the rock for another 60 seconds before a missed shot of their own. 

“We’re trying to be patient; we’re trying to find good shots against the zone. To some degree we have to find a layup there and we just weren’t finding it,” Pecatonica coach Matt Fink said.

A couple of possessions later, Pecatonica tied it at 2-2 nearly four minutes into the game. Then, the Warriors took off, courtesy of senior speedster Jaylen Rufenacht, who went coast to coast on a fast break to give Black Hawk the lead for good. Three possessions later, Rufenacht made it 8-2 with a steal and a two-handed dunk with 12:34 left on the board.

“He’s been the energizer guy on our team all year, which has been huge,” Wyssbrod said of Rufenacht.

It was all a part of a 20-3 run by the Warriors, which was capped by a 3-pointer from Rufenacht, who led Black Hawk with 22 points. The home Warriors went into halftime with a 27-10 lead. The Vikings turned the ball over 10 times and shot a putrid 16.6% on 3 of 18 from the field. The Warriors had six turnovers and were 9 of 22 from the field (40.9%).

“You can’t turn the ball over 10 times in a half and you can’t shoot 16% or you’ll put yourself in a hole,” Fink said.

The 17-point advantage was helpful to Black Hawk in the second half, as the Vikings found a way to creep back into the mix. A 3-pointer by Hunter Enloe out of the gates gave Pecatonica some momentum, then senior forward Bo Hendrickson simply took over.

“He kind of put us on his back in the second half,” Fink said. “I’m not going to be able to say enough to articulate how important he’s been to our program and how great of a senior year he’s had. He’s a double-double machine and we’re going to miss him. About halfway through his senior season he realized that this was it and he took his game to another level.”

Hendrickson, who scored 16 of his 22 points in the second half, all but carrying the Vikings on his broad shoulders. He entered this season as the lone returning starter and in his previous three seasons had never been the focal point of the offense.

“I knew I had to step up. I knew I had some teammates coming back that I could rely on that could grow over the season, and they did,” Hendrickson said. I knew it was going to be a struggle coming in, but you have to play with the cards you’re dealt.”

Pecatonica made it a 10-point game five minutes into the second half and got to within nine with 8:36 left.

That’s when the tide turned, and not so much in the Vikings favor. Following Hendrickson’s free throws that brought it to 37-28, none of the three officials blew the whistle when Black Hawk freshman Lucas Milz bobbled the ball for a double dribble. On the ensuing rebound attempt after the shot, a 50/50 foul call went in favor of the Warriors, which then had a bonus opportunity.

The string of misfortunates baffled Fink, who drew a technical.

“I got a little bit fired up there, too, but I’m trying to protect my kids,” Fink said. “There were two or three big calls — and it was an exceptionally poorly officiated game, in my opinion. These guys have to be held to a standard, too. If they are going to get after coaches about conduct and things like that, then they have to do their job, too. And they have to be able to make it work both ways — or at least be able to communicate what they are officiating and not assuming that every time we are asking them something we are challenging them; we were looking for explanations.”

Clayton Stietz knocked down the bonus throws and the technical shots for a 4-point swing. It wasn’t the only 50/50 call that favored the home team. Later in the half, with the scoreboard still showing a 10-point difference, Brock Miller was called for a charge on what appeared to be a foul on a jumping Warrior defender, erasing a basket and an and-one opportunity. 

“There’s a lot of blame that has to go around, but (the officiating was) certainly not the reason we lost — and that has to be understood. But it does affect tempo and game flow and substitution patterns and things like that; and they have to be held to a little bit higher of a standard,” Fink said.

To make matters worse for Pecatonica, the officials gave the foul to senior Chevy Hughes, who was on the bench, resulting in his fifth foul of the game.

The Vikings never brought the score back to within single digits the rest of the way.

“It’s brutal losing. You never want it to end this way. But you just keep fighting all game long. You can’t really control anything besides your team — you can’t control the refs, you can’t control the other team and what they do. I thought we responded well in the second half,” Hendrickson said.

Stietz finished with 17 points, while Enloe had 10 for Pecatonica. The Vikings were 12 of 16 from the free throw line, with Hendrickson making all 12 of his team’s free throws in 14 attempts. Black Hawk, which was in the bonus and double bonus for much of the second half, finished 19 of 28 from the line.

“We knocked them down at the end,” Wyssbrod said of free throws. “We struggled there for a bit, but that four-point turnaround there with Clayton making four-in-a-row was huge for us.”

Up next for Black Hawk is conference champion Monticello, which received a first-round bye. In the last game between the two teams, Black Hawk led early on only to get into foul trouble. Monticello then turned on the jets and outscored the Warriors by more than 60 over the game’s final 30 minutes.

“Last game we got into foul trouble right away,” Wyssbrod said. “Hopefully this game we don’t; and hopefully we can knock down some outside shots — that could help us a lot.”