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By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Shawnee Heights' hopes looked bleak late in the first half of Saturday's Capital City Classic championship game against Washburn Rural.
Shawnee Heights poses for a team picture Saturday after winning the championship in the Capital City Classic. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
Shawnee Heights celebrates its 59-54 win over Washburn Rural Saturday at Topeka West. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
The T-Birds trailed the Junior Blues by a whopping 16 points while their top three scorers were all in serious foul trouble.
But the situation wasn't anything a career performance from sophomore star KK Emmot as well as timely key plays from several other T-Birds couldn't rectify, with Shawnee Heights rallying for a 59-54 win at Topeka West.
"For our girls to have the resolve to come through adversity like they did, I'm just so proud of them,'' Shawnee Heights coach Bob Wells said. "Because it would have been real easy, like coach (Duncan) Whitlock said, to fold like a lawnchair, but they didn't. They kept fighting and they kept staying with it and they stayed together as a group when it would have been real easy to splinter off there.''
"We just really needed to step up and just stop fouling,'' Emmot said about the Heights turnaround. "We just had to change defenses. We changed to a different defense and we just kept going to that and that helped the game.''
Shawnee Heights sophomore KK Emmot (left), who scored 36 points, battles for a loose ball Saturday against Washburn Rural's Tenly Bunck (22) and Maddie Vickery. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
Emmot poured in a career-high 36 points, including 19 in the third quarter, as the 9-4 T-Birds turned the tables on the No. 5-ranked Class 6A Junior Blues.
"We just never stop competing,''Emmot said. "No matter how far down we are we just compete, compete, compete and competing wins the game.''
Shawnee Heights, which trailed 33-19 at the half, hit the Junior Blues (7-4) with a 24-11 lick in the third quarter, pulling within a point (44-43) at the start of the fourth quarter.
Rural continued to hold the lead through the bulk of the final stanza until T-Bird junior Reianna Vega scored with 45 seconds remaining to give Heights its first lead since the first quarter at 55-54.
Washburn Rural turnovers led to two Emmot free throws and two Vega charities to close out the win.
Vega backed Emmot with 12 points while senior Kaydence Torrez and Vega combined for 15 rebounds.
Washburn Rural sophomore Maddie Vickery scored 27 points in Saturday's 59-54 loss to Shawnee Heights. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
Sophomore Maddie Vickery led Washburn Rural with 27 points while sophomore Gracie Hayes added 9 points off the bench on three 3-pointers.
SHAWNEE HEIGHTS 59, WASHBURN RURAL 54
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By CHARLES SPURLOCK
Special to TopSports.news
Friday's semifinal games of the Glacier’s Edge Tournament had three of the top four-ranked teams in Class 6A (Wichita Heights No. 1, Derby No. 2, SM South No. 4) along with the top-ranked and defending state champion from Class 5A, Seaman, battling for the two spots in Saturday's championship game at Emporia High School.
Junior Maddie Gragg (32) scored a game-high 27 points in Seaman's 70-45 win over SM South Friday night. [File photo/TSN]
The Seaman Lady Vikings defeated the Shawnee Mission South Raiders, 70-45 on Friday night, turning a 4-point game at halftime into a rout as Seaman scored 51 points in the second half.
The Lady Vikes improved to 12-0 on the season and will face the Derby Panthers, a 52-46 upset winner over Wichita Heights, in the championship game at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
Over the first three minutes of the opening quarter, the Raiders jumped out to a 6-3 lead by beating the Lady Vikes off the dribble. The Lady Vikes battled back with 10 points by junior Maddie Gragg and led at the end of the first quarter, 14-11. However, both teams were sloppy with the ball -- Seaman committed seven turnovers and SM South six.
The sloppy play continued in the second quarter, with both teams committing seven turnovers each. Senior Anna Becker made Seaman’s first and only field goal of the quarter with 5:00 remaining in the half. But the Lady Vikes' defense was stingy and held SM South to only two buckets in the quarter and led 19-15 at the half.
“I thought in the first half we struggled to get into a flow of the game,'' Seaman coach Matt Tinsley said. "Too many turnovers and we shot 5-21 from the field. That’s not a good combination, but our defense was solid and kept us in the game.”
Scoring offense made an appearance in the third quarter for both teams, as each team scored more points (Seaman 27, SM South 17) in the quarter than they had in the entire first half.
“The girls made a great adjustment at the half and just made the game simple,'' Tinsley said. "Anna hit back-to-back 3s to kind of jump-start us.”
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By CHARLES SPURLOCK
Special to TopSports.news
After playing the final game of the first round of the Glacier’s Edge Tournament at Emporia High School on Thursday, the Topeka High Lady Trojans played the first game of the afternoon on Friday.
Sophomore Ahsieyrhuajh Rayton scored 24 points in Friday's 84-45 Topeka High win over Wichita Northwest. [File photo/TSN]
In a contest that was never in doubt, the Trojans defeated the Wichita Northwest Grizzlies, 84-45.
The victory propelled the Trojans, now 7-4 on the season, into the fifth-place game Saturday morning at 11 a.m., where they will face the Wichita South Titans.
The first eight minutes were dominated by the Trojans. Sophomore Aysieyrhuajh Rayton scored 11, freshman Hailey Caryl scored 6 and sophomore Keimara Marshall 5 to give Topeka High a commanding 26-12 lead at the end of the first quarter.
It was more of the same in the second stanza as the Lady Trojans tallied 29 points in the quarter, led by Marshall’s 12 points while junior Trish Short and Caryl each scored 6 as Topeka led 55-27 at the half.
The third quarter saw the Trojans outscore the Grizzlies 25-5. Rayton tallied 10 points followed by Short’s 5 points. The lead at the end of the quarter was 80-32, causing the running clock to be used during the fourth quarter.
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By Todd Fertig
TopSports.news
After Shawnee Heights rolled out a 29-point victory over Topeka West in late December, few would have expected it to happen again, least of all T-Birds coach Ken Darting.
Senior Jaret Sanchez scored 26 points Friday night as Shawnee Heights rolled to a 66-48 home UKC win over Topeka West. [File photo/TSN]
But after holding the Chargers to just five points in the second period, another blowout was on. The T-Birds built a 32-point lead in the third period and held on to win 66-48 Friday at Shawnee Heights.
“I told our team…that they could beat us by 29 tonight,” Darting said of the Chargers. “Not because we’re not playing good. That’s how scary they are.”
The T-Birds combined lock-down defense and better than 50 percent shooting to build the big lead. With the clock running in the fourth period, they allowed the Chargers to cut the final point spread to 18 points. The final score was misleading.
Senior Jaret Sanchez put the T-Birds on his back in the second period, scoring 12 of the team’s 16 points. Sanchez single-handedly outscored the Chargers 21-19 in the first half. He finished with 26.
“He’s a unique player, and a unique kid, period,” Darting said of the 6-foot-6 Sanchez. “When Jaret doesn’t play selfish, but lets the game come to him, he’s a top-five player in the state. What he does so well is – I call it ‘hunting.’ Every second, he’s looking for who’s not covering what area. Jaret plays to the defender and to the open spot on the floor. He can score getting grabbed in (the paint) or he can score from 25 feet.”
Sanchez credited Darting’s scouting report and strategy for the win over Topeka West, the sixth-ranked team in Class 5A according to the Kansas Basketball Coaches Association.
“The last two days, we had lengthy practices, going through everything, scouting against them,” Sanchez said. “We knew what we needed to do, and we played beautiful rotation defense, helping each other, knowing that we’ve got somebody there going to get our back. That was the best defense we’ve played all season.”
“I don’t look at five opponents a year on film,” Darting said. “I believe that we play a certain way, and we’re going to play that, and if it ain’t good enough, we’re going to get beat. But I saw probably four games of West on TV, so we had a Plan A, B and C in place. We knew that they were coming in with a (desire) to beat us by 30. So, we truly prepared for that.”
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By JUSTIN BURKHARDT
TopSports.news
EL DORADO -- The top-ranked team in Class 4A, the Hayden Lady Wildcats, would go up against 6A Gardner-Edgerton in the semifinal round of the 32nd annual Lady Cat Classic Friday night at El Dorado, with Hayden advancing to Saturday's championship game with a 57-49 victory.
Senior Amelia Ramsey (facing) led Hayden with 19 points and 10 rebounds in Friday's 57-49 win over Gardner-Edgerton. [File photo/TSN]
The Wildcats would go up 15-7 at the end of the first quarter and then the second quarter would see Gardner outscore the Wildcats 18-9 and take a 25-24 lead into halftime.
“I told the girls to stay the course and make sure we stay together,'' Hayden coach Carvel Reynoldson said. "It wasn’t the same type of game that we have been used to, where Brylee Meier gets hot and helps us get on a run.”
The senior was 2-9 from the field but would contribute with eight assists on the night.
“Coach told us we have to keep fighting and to stay positive, stay together and don’t yell at each other and don’t get mad at each other, keep fighting and being aggressive,” Hayden senior Amelia Ramsey said.
The Blazers would come out of halftime and take a 33-29 lead in the third quarter and then the Wildcats would go on a 15-0 run en route to outscoring the Blazers 20-8 in the third quarter and leading the rest of the game.
The Wildcats got a big night from their 6-foot senior Ramsey, who would score 19 points and grab 10 rebounds to secure a double-double and help her team advance to the championship game.
“I have been working hard and staying positive,'' Ramsey said. "I feel like this game was pretty tough and we faced a lot of adversity, but overall we stayed positive and after halftime we came out with more energy.”
"She carried us through today, she was our rock and she got put backs,'' Reynoldson said of Ramsey. "We continued to feed her, and she is a very solid player and does what she needs to do for her teammates.”
