Logan Hutcheson’s junior season with the Montgomery County boys basketball team ended on a disappointing note.

In the opening minutes against Wellsville-Middletown at Ballew & Snell Court, Hutcheson broke his left wrist, forcing him to miss the rest of the game and the season.

“Whenever that injury happened, that sucked, sitting out all of those games and practices,” Hutcheson said. “I was there to support my team, but it was tough. You’re with this team your whole life, then you’re sitting there on the sidelines. It’s tough, but I tried to fight through it.”

After three months in his senior season, Hutcheson is not only injury free, but he also has been the Wildcats’ top 3-point threat. He nailed eight 3-pointers in three games at the Hermann Invitational Tournament and four in a loss to Bowling Green on Jan. 18.

“Logan is that guy who can really change a game for you,” MCHS coach Scott Kroeger said. “He’s got a quick release. It’s fun to watch him shoot whenever that thing is going in the basket.”

Now, Hutcheson is setting his sights on helping the Wildcats finish with a winning record in his final high school basketball season. MCHS will take a 13-11 record into its home season finale on Feb. 15 against Elsberry.

“I’m expecting to come out and work hard, focus on scouting these teams, get ready to play these tough conference opponents and get ready for districts,” Hutcheson said.

Hutcheson has been playing basketball since elementary school. He said he will be upset when his high school basketball career comes to an end.

“It’s going to be a lot to give up,” said Hutcheson, who also played football in the fall and plans to play golf this spring. “Doing this for so long in my life, it will seem like I’ll be missing something during the winters.”

Even though Hutcheson missed nine games due to his injury last year, the Wildcats still turned in an outstanding season, winning 20 games and capturing Eastern Missouri Conference and Class 3 district championships.

“Last year’s conference was nice, even though I wasn’t a part of the team,” Hutcheson said. “I was there, but I wasn’t playing. It was great to see my team happy. It was nice to see everybody together there. Winning districts was something I wanted to do and my team wanted to do, so it was nice to see.”

Hutcheson said his team played against much tougher competition this season.

“We’re undersized,” the senior said. “We have to figure out how to play with each other. We lost a couple of players, so we have to figure out how to play with each other. I think we’re slowly figuring it out. If we can stay on a consistent ride, I think we’ll have a good chance of winning districts.”

Hutcheson helped the Wildcats place third in the Hermann tournament by nailing four 3-pointers in his team’s 53-48 win over St. James in the third-place game. He finished with 13 points.

“This was the best game of his career playing through pressure by far,” Kroeger said. “He was super strong with the ball. We talked at the shootaround about how we were going to handle pressure. He really took that to heart and stepped up and did a fantastic job for us against that pressure. He stepped through double teams multiple times and didn’t throw dangerous passes that ultimately led to open passes for us because he was able to handle that pressure. I’m super proud of him for that.”