Hawks race past Raiders

Published 8:11 am Wednesday, January 28, 2026

FLOWOOD — Hartfield Academy is now one win away from a district title.

Behind a fast start behind the three-point line the Hawks raced past Lamar School 59-37 on Tuesday night in a key MAIS District 2-4A matchup.

Hartfield (17-8, 6-1) hosts Starkville Academy on Friday in the regular season finale to try to lock up the one seed heading into the MAIS Class 4A North State Tournament at Pillow Academy next week.

“Noah (Sensing) came out of the gates hot making three three-pointers early to set the tone for us, and defensively we did enough things to frustrate them to take them out of their rhythm,” said Hartfield Academy coach Chris Goodman. “We just did a good job tonight keeping up the intensity on defense, while not keeping our foot off the gas on offense.”

It was all Hawks from the start. Hartfield began the game on a 11-0 run and eventually held a 13-5 lead at the end of the first quarter.

To begin the second quarter the Raiders cut the Hawks lead to 15-11, but Hartfield ended the first half on a 15-2 run to take a commanding 30-13 lead at halftime.

Hartfield outscored Lamar 15-8 in the third quarter to stretch their lead to 45-23.

In the fourth quarter the Hawks went on an 8-3 run to take a 53-26 lead and put the game out of reach.

Noah Sensing had 11 points to lead Hartfield, while Pepper Wilson added 10 points for the Hawks.

“Jacob is a good coach, and we knew they were going to play hard, so we had to keep answering the call for 32 minutes,” Goodman said. “This now sets us up for a really good opportunity on Friday night. Starkville snuck up on us and beat us a couple weeks ago, so now we have the opportunity to beat a really well coached Starkville Academy team and lock up the one seed going into the North State tournament.”

Jeremy Booker had 12 points to lead Lamar School. The Raiders (11-17) hosts Enterprise-Clarke on Friday night in the regular season finale and will be the last game of the year.

“Hartfield is a great three-point shooting team and that can keep you in the game against anybody. Our goal was to make their three-pointer shooters two-point shooters and their two-point shooters three-point shooters and when you don’t execute that in the first three possessions it can leave a bad taste and got away from the game plan,” said Lamar School coach Jacob Ginn. “Once we got punched in the mouth a couple times we chose to fold instead of fight and it’s very frustrating. We need to care about what we’re doing and that’s difficult when things aren’t easy, so in the offseason we’re going to spend a lot of time in the gym and get Lamar basketball relevant again.”