Chickasaw boys survive, claim overtime thriller

No one needed to tell the members of the New Hampton boys basketball team about Oelwein’s “streak.”
They knew.
They knew that the Huskies haven’t won a Northeast Iowa Conference game since Jan. 31, 2012, and they knew that the streak stood at 73 games heading into Friday night’s tilt.
“Everyone knows about it,” senior Tyler Rentschler said, “and none of us want to be on the team that breaks it. They’re better than they have been, I’ll say that, but there’s no way I wanted to walk out of here knowing we were the team that finally lost to them. None of us wanted to take that walk of shame.”
But there were numerous times Friday night where it looked like the Chickasaws would have to take that dreaded walk, yet they found a way, and Rentschler’s two free throws with 16 seconds in overtime proved the difference as New Hampton survived to post a 61-60 victory.
“I’ve seen a lot of 0-11 Oelwein teams,” New Hampton coach Chad Sweitzer, referring to the Huskies’ NEIC record, “but this isn’t a typical 0-11 team. I said at the beginning of the year that they were going to win some conference games this year, and maybe I’m going to be wrong, but they’ve played a lot of people tough this year.”
  --The rest of the story may be found in the Feb. 6 Tribune.