By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
Despite playing a game just one night prior, the Southeast of Saline boy’s basketball team wasted no time jumping on a league foe in Ellsworth, aiding in a 63-41 victory on Tuesday night.
This win is the eighth straight for the Trojans, bringing their season record to 18-1, and more importantly, giving them sole possession of a second-straight league title in the NCAA.
While some teams around the league had been able to keep things close with Southeast, this one was over before it truly began as the Trojans took a 20-5 lead into the first quarter break and never looked back.
“We played really well early and I thought the guys had a lot of energy,” SES head coach Bryson Flax said. “Whenever you can make things difficult for a team that’s struggling to find a second, third or fourth option you take their comfort away and they struggled to score as a result. We shared the ball really well tonight.”
Eight different Trojans found the scoring column in this game, including three in double-digits, led by Nakari Morrical-Palmer (17), Eli Sawyers (13), and Luke Gebhardt (10).
Most of those baskets came off of assists as Southeast once again shook the defense loose to find good looks in droves.
“We like the consistency of spreading the ball around and our offense is set up to get anyone a touch at any time,” Flax said. “We have plays to exploit mismatches but it’s set up to share the ball and that’s what these guys excel at, we just have to give them the space.”
With two games in as many days to start their week, SES will have the rest of the week off before a Tuesday tilt with Republic County, followed by another long break before sub-state the following week.
“We’ll take tomorrow off and the rest of this week will be a lot of shooting,” he said. “We’ll probably take some time to rest up again after Republic County but we’ll keep scouting and making sure the guys keep getting shots up.”
The Trojans are locked into the one-seed at sub-state but are unlikely to face a real pushover in the first round, with all eight teams in the bracket posting a record at or above .500.
“Usually you look for an easy game at sub-state but in our bracket that’s not the case,” Flax said. “We could see a variety of different teams at our place and that’s a good thing but we’ll just have to keep preparing day by day.”