Pella Christian is knocking on the door of their 15th-ever boys state tournament appearance after holding off a persistent Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont team 80-66 in a Class 2A District Finals Game heard live on KNIAKRLS.com.

The Eagles never trailed in the game, but couldn’t pull away from the Rockets, who kept the contest within three to five possessions throughout the majority of the game.

Pella Christian Head Coach Larry Hessing says they didn’t do enough defensively to take an aggressive attack away from EBF, and also had some poor choices on offense that kept giving the Rockets extra chances late.

“We got off to a fairly quick start early in the first quarter and I was really thankful for that down the stretch when Eddyville cut it down to eight at one point,” Hessing says. “We shot the ball pretty well, but give Eddyville a lot of credit — they are very physical and they really worked hard on the boards, and we didn’t do a really good job of blocking them out.”

Jason Lai led with 21 points, followed by 13 from Jayden Huisman, who also slammed four dunks, and 13 from Josh Van Gorp.

Pella Christian improves to 14-8 and has a regular season rematch with Van Meter Saturday night in the Class 2A Substate Finals at Knoxville High School.