By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
Earlier this season, the Southeast of Saline boys’ basketball team defeated the Sacred Heart Knights for the first time since 2014.
Tonight, SES finished the sweep, handing Sacred Heart their first home loss at the hands of the Trojans since 2007.
One of the stars of that 07’ victory was a young Bryson Flax, who scored 16 points in the most recent Trojan sweep of the Knights.
Tonight, Flax stood on the sideline as the head coach of SES, steering the ship through the storm of an absolute thriller won in the final minutes 54-51.
“It’s everything we expected,” he said. “Sacred Heart gave us a great game and they were pretty good for a while there but this feels good and the guys are feeling great about it, they really showed some guts tonight.”
While the quick tempo of the SES offense gave the Knights fits in their first meeting, Sacred Heart came out looking like they wanted to beat Southeast at their own game tonight.
“I was getting worn out just watching it,” Flax said. “There was a lot of good pace and the atmosphere was fantastic. Our guys love playing in games like that.”
The teams were dead even at the half but in the third quarter, Danny Kejr came to life, knocking down three huge buckets to help SES take a lead heading into the fourth.
“Danny was really good and he was pretty good defensively too, Flax said. “It’s all mental with him because he can shoot the basketball and we worked on his confidence a little bit before this game. He can do a lot of different things and he carried us in that third quarter.”
While SES and Sacred Heart weren’t separated by much, the Trojans did force 15 turnovers tonight while coughing the ball up just five times.
Southeast also spread the wealth evenly, with four players in double digits, led by Kejr with a new career-high 13 points.
“We did a nice job of picking and choosing our spots when we went to the post,” Flax said. “We were seeing some stuff on film that we thought we could exploit and we were able to get downhill.”
Three Knights cracked double digits tonight but just four total players, all starters, inked their names in the scoring column tonight.
This win puts some separation between SES (6-0) and the rest of the field in league play and with a win over Beloit next week the Trojans could all but secure another league title.
SES will be back in action on Friday at 7 pm when they host the Chapman Fighting Irish.