By Roger Gordon

Correspondent

Two underclassmen guards — junior Mason Biltz and sophomore Trevor Flarida — were responsible for all of the Waterloo boys basketball team’s scoring in the fourth quarter in rallying the Vikings to a 51-48 triumph at home over Middlefield Cardinal on Feb. 23 in a Division VII sectional semifinal.

Biltz and Flarida each scored half of their team’s 18 points in the final period to erase a four-point Waterloo deficit entering the fourth quarter.

The Vikings, who improved to 5-18 on the season, jumped out to an 8-0 lead early on.

“I don’t think we scored again for … it felt like 8 or 9 minutes,” Waterloo head coach Gavin English said of his team that led by just a single point after the first quarter and that trailed by seven points at the half. “Defensively, we were pretty good. Giving up only 21 points in a half is pretty solid, especially come tournament time. Our defense kept us in it. In the third quarter, we were able to get some stops.”

Then came Biltz and Flarida’s scoring blitz in the fourth quarter.

Biltz finished with 18 points and four steals, while Flarida had 16 points and six rebounds.

“Mason this season has been a true point guard, a pass-first point guard, for us. He’s a heck of an athlete,” said English. “He’s always trying to pass first, trying to find the person who is hot that night. But in the third quarter he hit a big 3-pointer for us, and he got this look in his eye, and he just took over after that. He hit back-to-back 3-pointers in the fourth quarter to give us the lead, and then he had a couple good and-ones. He played really well.

“We had a lot of turnovers in the first half, so Cardinal was pressuring us the entire second half, but Trevor, and also Mason, actually handled the ball really well.

“Props to those two guys.”