The Newton basketball teams earned a sweep over Des Moines Hoover in their first games of 2025 Friday night, as the girls opened the doubleheader heard live on the KRLS3 stream with a 58-47 victory, followed by the boys squad winning 45-43 in the nightcap.

In the girls game, the Cardinals and Huskies got off to slow starts, with Newton holding a narrow 10-7 advantage at the end of the first quarter. Newton head coach Jake Bennett said it took awhile for the team to get settled into their zone offense, before scoring the first 16 points of the second half to take a 47-27 lead into the 4th quarter. 

“The message at halftime was to come out and be selfless with the ball. Be more aggressive with our defense and create offense with our defense. Once we did that in the third quarter we took off a little bit.”

Senior Hailey Dickerson led the Cardinal girls in the win with 12 points, while fellow senior Alex Garvis also reached double figures with 10 points. 

The nightcap featured a tight matchup between Newton and Hoover. The Huskies held a 16-11 lead after the opening quarter, but the Cardinals clawed back to take a 30-26 advantage into halftime.  Newton’s lead slipped to just one at the end of the third quarter,  as they carried a 36-35 edge into the final eight minutes of play.. With the Cardinals still leading late in the game, Hoover hit a three pointer with just 5.8 seconds left to pull within 44-43 and then fouled Newton senior Christian Ergenbright to try and extend the game. Ergenbright hit one of his two free throws with 4.6 seconds left on the clock to put the Cardinals up by two, and after Newton used their fouls to give, Hoover missed a long three-pointer with .5 seconds left to give the Cardinals the win. Cade Bauer led the Cardinals in the victory with 18 points. Newton head coach Jason Carter said that this was the second time they’ve used the late-game fouling strategy, after implementing it  in a win at Indianola before the holiday break.

“We practice fouling and when to foul. I thought the kids executed it really well, putting them in a tough spot where they had to catch and shoot and really couldn’t run anything.”

The Newton boys and girls basketball teams have short turnarounds following the wins, taking on Knoxville at Wells Fargo Arena today. Coverage of the Cardinals doubleheader in Des Moines today can be heard live on the KRLS3, stream, beginning with pregame coverage at 11:45 a.m.