By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Southeast of Saline Trojans boys basketball team (4-4) will be riding high into the Sterling Invitational on a three game winning streak.
"These wins are crucial to our season,” SES head coach Bryson Flax said. “I told the guys that when we play well but lose, we continue to get better, but we needed to start winning some games too.”
Southeast will have a prime opportunity to continue improving and to pick up some key wins in a tournament that has become one of the most competitive in the state.
"Any time you go into a tournament, you hope to get two out of three,” Flax said. “I think we can compete with anybody in this tournament but we just need to consistently do things right from the jump."
The first of those three games will be against the 5-3 Hutch Trinity Celtics, a team that will pose a challenge for the Trojans.
"Trinity is really hard to scout, because out of the three films that we have they only had a full roster on one of them,” he said. They’re a completely different ball club when they have their two best players on the floor.”
One of the aforementioned star players is senior guard Lucas Hammeke, who’s aggressive driving style to the rim will require the SES defense to stay on its toes.
While the Trojans enter this tournament as the five seed, coach Flax believes the biggest threat to their success could very well be themselves.
“I've got a lot of confidence that we can play with the field,” he said. “But we can't hold ourselves back by making silly mistakes. We have to go and do things right to have a chance late in every game."
Tipoff between SES and Hutch Trinity will be at 6pm tonight from Sterling College, with the winner playing the winner of Lyons and Kingman on Thursday, and the loser playing on Tuesday.
As always, you can tune in to catch Trojan basketball on KINA (910 AM or 107.5 FM) or stream it live on Salina Post.