Jamin Metzger, Micah Bush and teammates thought they were living a dream when they returned home with their Hills-Beaver Creek football team after winning the Nine-Player title in the fall.

Fans lined the streets in town to celebrate the team’s first Prep Bowl title since 1990.

So you can imagine the type of crowd that will meet the Patriots when they bring back their Class 1A boys basketball championship trophy after a convincing 64-33 victory over second-seeded Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton on Saturday, March 28, at Williams Arena.

“I think basketball will be bigger,” said Metzger, who led his fifth-seeded team with 22 points and 13 rebounds. “Basketball is the first time ever. We’ve had a lot of great teams come through HBC, but it feels good that we’re the ones to finally do it after all these years.”

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Hills-Beaver Creek coach Chad Rauk might need time to put into perspective what it means to have a group of players who won both football and basketball state titles in the same school year.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever see that again,” Rauk said. “Especially at a small school. A Class A school where you can go football and basketball. It just goes to show you that if you get the right players with the right mindset and want to put the right work in, the results prove themselves.”

The 6-foot-5, 210-pound Metzger, a Division II Sioux Falls quarterback commit, was too athletic and powerful in the paint to stop for Class 1A foes this year, which included averaging 18.7 points and 11 rebounds in three state tournament games. Sophomore cousin Brodie Metzger, also a talented football player, had 13 points, eight rebounds and three steals Saturday.

Bush, a 6-1, 175-pound South Dakota State safety recruit, had 10 points and seven rebounds Saturday. His team-high 20 points helped lead Hills-Beaver Creek past top-seeded Henning 71-67 in overtime in Friday’s semifinals.

“We’ve been competing for so long,” Bush said about playing both sports at the varsity level. “Basketball is just special. For me, it was my favorite sport growing up for a long time. It’s just so much fun playing with all these guys. Spending time at the hotel and bus rides. It was such an amazing experience.”

The Patriots (30-3) led 32-9 at halftime Saturday after holding their opponent to 3-for-24 shooting from the field in the first half. Hills-Beaver Creek ended the half with a 19-3 run.

“We’ve been all playing together since fifth grade,” senior guard Eduardo Wegener said. “We don’t like to lose.”

Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton (30-4) averaged 80 points per game during a seven-game winning streak entering the program’s first state title game but ran into perhaps the most physical opponent it played all season.

The Bulldogs, led by Gavin Bauer’s 11 points, cut their deficit twice to 11 points in the second half after a 17-5 run capped by Daulton Bauer’s layup to make it 37-26 with 13:32 left in the second half. They were outscored 27-7 the rest of the way.

“You can tell they’re football players,” J-W-P coach Nick James said. “Very athletic. Very strong. What do we do? We have one guy over 6-foot in our rotation. Just makes it more physical. It was a tough hill [to climb], but these guys have battled all year.”

BOXSCORE: Hills-Beaver Creek 64, Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton 33

When did Hills-Beaver Creek believe it could make the program’s first-ever run to the boys basketball state tournament? That started last year when the same group suffered a 59-52 loss to Dawson-Boyd in the Class 1A, Section 3 title game.

Dawson-Boyd went on to win the Class 1A championship, so the Patriots thought, “Why not us this year?”

“We took them wire to wire, so we knew we had the team,” Rauk said. “When you can put these athletes with their selflessness and how they play for each other and want to play for the community and the team, then anything is possible.”