By TYLER HENRY
Lead Sportswriter - Salina Post
On Friday night, the Southeast of Saline basketball teams played to another split, this time in a Trojan War with Beloit on their home floor in Gypsym.
Southeast’s Lady Trojans would dominate Beloit 66-31, while Beloit’s Trojans held on for an 81-68 victory over SES.
Girls: Beloit 31, SE of Saline 66
After coming back to knock off Abilene on Tuesday, the Lady Trojans of Southeast of Saline rode a wave of momentum into this game with Beloit leading 17-12 at the end of the first before exploding for a 41-21 halftime advantage.
Much of that damage was dealt beyond the three-point line where Southeast knocked down five second-quarter triples and 11 for the game.
On the other end, the Lady Trojans buckled down in the second half, allowing just eight points in the third quarter and holding Beloit to two points without a single field goal in the fourth.
“I thought everybody did their job tonight,” SES head coach Shauna Smith said. “We needed to be better about working as a team because if four people are doing the right things and one isn’t, that doesn’t work. Defensively and offensively, everyone stepped up.”
One notable change came in the Lady Trojan lineup where two freshmen started for Southeast, but the change worked like a charm as newly added Kyiah Samuelson led the way with 14 points, and Regan Duran dropped 12 off the bench.
“Some kids are better coming off the bench and our girls know they’ll still get their minutes,” Smith said. “Regan responded well, and she gave us some big-time threes in this game. Kaya is really good offensively, she gets to the rim and we need that.”
On the other side of the matchup Cassandra Thompson was the only Beloit Lady Trojan in double figures with 20 points including 10 makes from the charity stripe.
Southeast moves to 2-1 on the season while Beloit falls to 1-2.
Boys: Beloit 81, SE of Saline 68
On the boy’s side, Southeast challenged their rivals in Beloit but couldn’t match pace early as the orange Trojans used a big late run to pull away to victory.
SES trailed by as many as 14 points but bookended halftime with a big run to take the lead in the third quarter.
From there, however, Beloit would go on a 15-0 run of their own and the Trojans in purple and white would struggle to recover down the stretch.
“We were up 54-53 but the next time you look up at the scoreboard, they were ahead 66-54 and that was the difference in this game,” SES head coach Francis Flax said. “We had a stretch where we couldn’t hit a bucket or get to the free throw line but other than that, I wasn’t disappointed with anything else we did tonight.”
While this will go down as a loss, dropping Southeast to 0-3 on the young season, there were a lot of things in this game that should reassure the Gypsum faithful.
After scoring just 38 points in their season opener, and 43 against Abilene on Tuesday, Southeast found their footing offensively with 68 points in this game.
“Gannon played better than he has all year, Owen played well in the second half, and Tiernen hit some big threes for us,” Flax said. “We did a lot of good things but it’s tough with what he have to combat their height and weight inside. We didn’t do a great job of helping on the back side but we did a lot of good things, and we’re going to have some sore boys after this one.”
Four different Southeast Trojans finished this game in double digits, led by Owen Bailey (21), Gannon Jacobson (18), Tiernen Ptacek (13), and Sam Knopf (12).
Beloit’s big three did enough to make up for that headway, with a 23-point night for Eli Johnson, 21 for Luke Cheney and 18 for Jackson Cheney.
SES falls to 0-3 while 7th-ranked Beloit gets their first win of the season at 1-2.
Southeast will be back in action next Thursday for one last contest in 2024 when they travel to take on the Hillsboro Trojans and Lady Trojans.
Both SES vs. Beloit games can be streamed any time on-demand below.