By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
After surviving a shaky start, the Southeast of Saline boys’ basketball team made a statement in the opening round of this year’s 3A state tournament, eliminating Perry-Lecompton 64-47 to advance to the semifinals on Friday.
While the Kaws’ campaign comes to a close at 19-5, the Trojans go marching on, and with their 23rd victory of the season (23-1), set a new benchmark for single-season wins in program history.
“These achievements are all them, I haven’t done anything,” SES head coach Bryson Flax said. “All we try to do is put them in positions to be successful and they do the rest. 23 wins is a lot of danged wins for a season that’s capped at 21. These guys are talented, they’re locked in and they’re hungry, that’s been the difference between us and a lot of teams this year.”
Things started disastrously for Southeast, who found themselves down 8-0 early and took a 17-7 deficit into the second quarter.
From there, however, the Trojans roared to life and never looked back, outscoring the Kaws 23-4 in the second, and 57-30 in the final three quarters to cruise through the quarterfinal round 64-47.
“We knew that this was a team that hadn’t been here in a while that was going to play hard,” Flax said. “All day these have been games of runs and we just wanted to hang in there and wait for our run to come. It took us too long to settle in but I’m proud of our guys, they played really hard.”
Nobody felt the strain of that slow first quarter quite as badly as Eli Sawyers, who was held without a bucket for the first eight minutes.
After returning to the game in the second, Sawyers immediately made his presence felt, scoring twelve of the Trojan's 23 points in the second quarter and leaving the contest with a game-high 22 points, and a perfect 6-6 at the stripe.
“Historically we haven’t been that great from the free-throw line but it was nice to hit a couple,” Flax said. “Eli is a competitor, he knows he has to be good in big games and I thought he was.”
Sawyers was joined in double figures by Nakari Morrical-Palmer and Luke Gebhardt who finished with 14 and 13 respectively on a night that saw seven different Trojans in the scoring column.
In addition to those 14 points, Morrical-Palmer filled up the stat sheet with 13 rebounds, 3 steals, 3 assists, and a number of huge stops on defense.
“Nakari is a special player and they were physical with him but he did a phenomenal job of rebounding the basketball, he said. “I love having a kid like that on my team.”
Both Morrical-Palmer and Sawyers ended their game with a double-double, as Sawyers snagged 11 boards before all was said and done.
Next up, the Trojans will turn their attention to the 3A semifinals where they will square off with either Hesston or Colby for a trip to the state championship game.
“You can’t win what you want to win unless you win three in a row this year but our guys are really locked in. We’ll take care of ourselves and it’s a late game but our guys will be ready.”