Boys basketball falls to Blue Valley 76-65
The team ends the regular season 4-16 after a back-and-forth game on the road
February 25, 2017
After leading throughout the first half, the boys basketball team fell to Blue Valley 76-65 on Friday, Feb. 24.
Going into halftime, the game was tied at 33-33 and the Jaguars had been hitting shots throughout the first half. Head coach Mike Bennett wanted to take advantage of Blue Valley’s defensive lapses to keep momentum in the second half.
“I told them to just keep playing well,” Bennett said. “I kept encouraging them to attack and keep trying to drive to see if they’re over-helping [on defense]. Also, to see if we can kick if the help was late. I wanted to see if we could keep scoring.”
Junior Brody Flaming had the same mindset as Bennett and how the Jaguars tried to “keep our hopes up throughout the game and keep the energy up.”
The game continued to be back-and-forth throughout the second half as Blue Valley put the pressure on the Jaguars. One player for Blue Valley — senior Tyler Geiman — kept the game close, ultimately making enough plays and hitting enough shots to secure the victory.
Bennett made defensive adjustments to slow down Geiman on offense and keep the Jaguars in the game.
“There’s not much you can do. He’s a really good player,” Bennett said. “It doesn’t matter if you have a guard on him. You have to go out and try to defend him as a team. You have to get in gaps and make him become a passer rather than a scorer.”
The Jaguars eventually fell after being outscored 43-32. However, Flaming was proud of his team’s effort amidst the loss and what they did on both sides of the ball.
“We were just trying to keep our hopes up throughout the game,” Flaming said. “They are a really good shooting team and we defended the three-point better than we expected to. We also passed the ball around [offensively] and found some good shots. I saw a lot of good things tonight.”
As the regular season comes to a close, Bennett believes that this first season in the Eastern Kansas League can be a learning experience moving forward.
“[This schedule] just prepares us for the future,” Bennett said. “It prepares us with who we play and how we’re going to play them the next season. We have an idea of what it’s like with the talent level and what we need to do to get better. That’s what we’ve got to do — we’ve got to get better.”
The boys basketball team next plays at St. Thomas Aquinas in sub-state on Thursday, March 2.
