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Hillcrest raced out to a 25-6 lead after 12 minutes of play en route to a convincing 79-48 win over Thornton at the Thornton Shootout on Saturday.

Jovan Mooring led the victorious Hawks with a game-high 19 points, while Kyle Oden added 11 points and Devonte Archer chipped in 10 points.

“This was a team effort,” Mooring said. “We had fun and played like a team tonight. We rallied the storm. The way we’ve been playing I didn’t expect to win like this. This was our best game of the year and we need to play like this every night.”

Thornton would recover in frenetic fashion midway through the second quarter, however the Hawks completely dominated the remainder of the game.

“We just got outmatched,” Thornton coach Troy Jackson said. “They are just a better team. The good thing is we don’t have to see them again. They aren’t in our conference or in our Class.”

Hillcrest (7-2) was simply too fast and too good for the Wildcats (3-5) to hang with for four quarters on this night. Thornton used a 14-0 second quarter run behind six points each by D’Andre Fuller and Da’Marques Turner to briefly get back into the game, 25-20.

The Wildcats cut it to 30-28 before a 9-0 half-ending run by Hillcrest reestablished control at 39-28. That lead exploded to 60-39 by the end of the third quarter behind Allen Jones, who had 11 of his 13 points in the quarter including three three-pointers.

Justin Montgomery, Turner, Justin Taylor, and Fuller netted nine points apiece for Thornton.

“[Thornton] is a proud school and I don’t want to see them anytime in the future,” Hillcrest coach Don Houston said. “I know if we saw them again it would not be this way. We’ve been stressing to the team that we have to learn how to maintain a lead. We’ve been taking some punches but we know how to rebound [from a run] now.”