SIOUX FALLS — Rapid City Christian is onto the state semifinals.

The veteran Comets took advantage of an early lead and never looked back, upending Clark-Willow Lake 76-53 to close out day one of the Class A state boys basketball tournament.

“We’ve got a veteran crew,” said RCC head coach Kyle Courtney. “There’s eight good teams in this field and Clark-Willow Lake is a very quality program, they got a lot of young talent on that team. They’re going to be pretty formidable these next couple of years. But I thought our kids executed our game plan pretty well.”

The Comet’s game plan required plenty of attention to a young and budding Cyclone team featuring 6-foot-7 freshman Sully Felberg, 6-foot-6 sophomore Bo Begeman, and 6-foot-4 junior Emmerson Larson.

RCC has just one starter, 6-foot-5 senior Julius Frog, nearing the length CWL has in the front court, forcing the guard-heavy Comets to rely on physicality in the defensive effort.

“We’re pretty used to that, we usually are the smaller team, we’ve kind of just embodied that,” said senior guard Simon Kieffer. “But we try to use our quickness, our athleticism, to our advantage.”

The Comets not only kept with the CWL bigs, they matched the Cyclones in paint points with 32. A big portion of those 32 paint points were from fastbreaks, including 23 points off of turnovers that helped turn defense into offense.

“We got some steals and some fastbreaks, and when they played that zone we just needed to beat it down the floor,” said coach Courtney. “So being a smaller team, that’s our game. We’ve got to turn it into a game of speed.”

The Comets controlled the game from the opening tip, jumping to a 9-2 lead early in the first quarter, pushing it to a 21-13 advantage at the quarter break.

Just 90 seconds into the 2nd quarter, that lead was 15. Back-to-back buckets by Felberg and a layup from Chris Bevers sliced the lead back to single digits a few minutes later, but the Comets pushed it back to 13 at the halftime break.

Felberg led the Cyclones with 16 points in the loss, while Bevers netted 15 points as well.

The Comets continued to pour it on in the second half, outsourcing the Cyclones 36-26.

“We try to keep going and building that lead to what we have. This is March. This is the state tournament. Anything can happen,” said Simon Kieffer. So we weren’t very content with that lead, and we wanted to try to keep building that and getting it to a safer lead.”

The unsung heroes of the game were senior Wes Schlabach and junior Lars Kieffer. While neither filled up the stat sheet, they played interchanging roles of guarding Felberg throughout the contest. Felberg ended the game with 16 points and nine rebounds, shooting 6-for-15 from the field.

“He’s so skilled. You saw him bring the ball down,” said coach Courtney of Felberg. “Shoots the three extremely well, and has range on that too. He can post up and he’s just so versatile. But I thought Wes and Lars did a nice job at what we wanted to do but credit to him still, he still had 16 points. He is a special player.”

Simon Kieffer led all scorers in the game with 20 points and four assists, Benson Kieffer added 14 points and three rebounds, and Frog, having one of the most efficient outings in win, tallying 14 points and eight rebounds on 7-for-13 shooting.

“Julius is such a great player, he can score on the inside and the outside,” said Simon Kieffer. “Him just getting the ball just opens everything up for all of us other guys getting us good looks, because he’s such a good player he just attracts so much attention down there. So getting him going is super important to us cause it just opens up everything else for us.”

Aiden Roberts tallied 10 points for the Comets while Sully Kieffer scored nine points off the bench.

Larson reached double figures with 11 points for the Cyclones as well.

The Comets advance to the state semifinals Friday night, facing off with defending state champion Hamlin in a rematch from a 71-59 loss at the hands of the Chargers on Jan. 25.

“Last game we played them earlier in the season, we didn’t come out very well. We didn’t play very physical. Hamlin’s a super good team, we all know that, they won state last year and they’re super physical, super tough,” said Simon Kieffer. “So we just have to come in with a chip on our shoulder, play strong, play with each other, and we’ll see what happens.”