{"id":77047,"date":"2026-01-03T16:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T16:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/77047\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T16:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T16:10:07","slug":"belfields-intensity-overwhelms-hettinger-scranton-in-district-7-opener-the-dickinson-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/77047\/","title":{"rendered":"Belfield’s intensity overwhelms Hettinger-Scranton in District 7 opener – The Dickinson Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

BELFIELD N.D. \u2014 Belfield junior Carter Corneil walked out of the locker room postgame with plenty to smile about. <\/p>\n

The junior poured in 17 points to lead the Bantams to a 63-40 win over Hettinger-Scranton on Friday, Jan. 2 at Belfield High School.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just like to play basketball,” Corneil said. \u201cI just like going out there and getting buckets, it doesn’t matter to me how I get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corneil scored those buckets from all three levels on Friday night. In the first quarter, he knocked down a trio of 3-pointers to help the Bantams jump out to a 24-10 lead after one quarter.<\/p>\n

Coming out of halftime with a 36-20 lead, Hettinger-Scranton cut the deficit to single digits, but timely shot-making by Corneil and the Bantams prevented the Nighthawks from getting back within striking distance.<\/p>\n

Holding leads has been a problem that’s plagued the Bantams at times this season. In the Roughrider tournament, they let a few leads slip, resulting in narrow losses \u2013 not the case Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just proud of our team for keeping the energy up,” Corneil said. \u201cSometimes we lose energy and the other team starts to make a comeback, and I’m proud of us for keeping our flow and playing our game.\u201d<\/p>\n

That energy didn’t just manifest on the offensive end.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_9985.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Belfield took down Hettinger-Scranton 63-40 on Friday, Jan. 2 at Belfield High School.<\/p>\n

Carter Dooner \/ The Dickinson Press<\/p>\n

Belfield’s overall aggression and identity have been to create chaos, and they thrived under that chaos for the full 32 minutes \u2013 especially defensively.<\/p>\n

The Bantams forced a handful of 10-second violations and sped the Nighthawks up all night long, resulting in a bevy of turnovers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur practices are going to be chaotic. We’re going to make people play under our chaos, and I think we did that tonight,” Belfield head coach Jace Kocer said. \u201cWe fly around and have an athletic group of kids, so I try to give them that freedom. And they just love playing basketball, so it’s not hard to get them into that mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belfield also got contributions beyond Corneil. Last year\u2019s leading scorer Shane Stroh added 12 points, while Sutton Johnson and Noah Obrigewitch chipped in 10 and eight, respectively.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0056.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Belfield took down Hettinger-Scranton 63-40 on Friday, Jan. 2 at Belfield High School.<\/p>\n

Carter Dooner \/ The Dickinson Press<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the big things for us is that we knew Carter [Corneil] was going to be awesome, and we knew Shane [Stroh] was going to be a great player; it was about filling those new roles with new players, ” Kocer said. \u201cWhen the next piece is up, it’s just how we can get the next guys to play their part, and they did an awesome job tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the Nighthawks, there were glimpses. The team was fresh off a nearly two-week hiatus and had played just two games this season, making Friday’s game a tall task.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew coming in that Belfield was a physical team and liked to play chaotic and push tempo,\u201d Hettinger-Scranton head coach Kelly Pierce said. \u201cWe did not come out of the locker room ready for that, and they got off to a great start. Once we kind of woke up and started playing a little more physically and understanding what we wanted to do defensively, we did alright.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belfield will step right back into action on Saturday, Jan 3, against Trenton. Hettinger-Scranton will travel South on Saturday to take on Faith.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Carter<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Carter is a sports reporter for the Dickinson Press. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2025 with a journalism degree.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BELFIELD N.D. \u2014 Belfield junior Carter Corneil walked out of the locker room postgame with plenty to smile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-77047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}