One look at Blue Valley West’s Robert Lewandowski and it’s easy to see that he would pose a matchup problem for just about any team in the state.
At 6-foot-9 and around 250 pounds, most teams would have a hard time slowing Lewandowski, let alone keep him from scoring points, and lots of them.
The Emporia High boys found that out the hard way Saturday in a 65-54 loss to Blue Valley West in the championship game of the Paul Terry Classic, as Lewandowski, who is four inches taller than the tallest EHS player, scored 21 points on 10-of-16 shooting to lead all scorers.
“He’s a nice player and I knew he was going to create problems for us because that’s something you can’t emulate in a practice setting,” EHS coach Rick Bloomquist said. “Believe it or not, that was probably good for us, because that’s the first time we’ve had to be fundamental on the inside, and we weren’t very fundamental defensively at all.
“When you get a guy who’s as good as he is, you have to do the small things that we didn’t do.”
Blue Valley West’s best offense seemed to come from Lewandowski put-backs off of offensive rebounds. The Jaguars actually had more offensive rebounds (16) than defensive rebounds (15), with Lewandowski grabbing 6 offensive boards.
“When you give up 16 offensive rebounds, you’re not going to win basketball games,” Bloomquist said. “An offensive rebound obviously gives you a second shot, and so we gave them 16 second shots. If they just make 30 percent of those, that’s a lot of points. In a nutshell, rebounding was obviously a black eye.”
But for as good as Lewandowski was, the Spartans actually kept pace with the Jaguars for much of the game.
After finding itself in an early 11-5 hole, Emporia fought all the way back to take a 16-14 lead at the end of the first quarter thanks to 10 points from sophomore Taylor Euler. Both teams traded the lead several times in the second quarter, with Blue Valley West holding a one-point advantage at halftime, 33-32.
Euler had 14 points by the intermission, going 6-of-7 from the field, including 2-for-2 from behind the three-point line. Euler, who finished with a team-high 18 points, credited much of his scoring success to the fact that he was able to take advantage of a defensive mismatch created by the court presence of Spartan junior guard Caydrick Bloomquist.
“I felt really comfortable because Caydrick was getting the best defender, so I was getting the second- or third-best defender, which was a weaker defender,” Euler said. “A lot of that goes to Caydrick, because he’s such a great player that when he’s out there, the third or second defender will be on me and I’ll be able to take them to the basket. I had a lot of open shots.”
Emporia continued to battle Blue Valley West in the third quarter, as the Spartans took the lead three times in the period, including a 38-35 advantage — their largest of the game — on jumper from Euler.
The dagger that set off Blue Valley West’s run to victory came at the final buzzer of the third period, when Jake Wolfe launched a shot from halfcourt that swished as time expired to put the Jaguars ahead 46-42. From there, things went downhill for Emporia.
The Jaguars outscored the Spartans 19-12 in the fourth quarter, forcing Emporia to turn to fouling Blue Valley West, but even that didn’t slow the Jaguars.
“They’re just an extremely good team. That’s probably going to be one of the most fundamental basketball teams we’ll play all year,” Euler said. “We tried to press them, but they are just so fundamental that we couldn’t get turnovers, and when we fouled them, they knocked down their free throws. We were just kind of at a disadvantage because when we were trying to get the ball back and we fouled them, they hit their free throws.”
Bloomquist said his team would use the lessons learned against Lewandowski and the Jaguars to get better.
“There’s no need to panic; nobody is panicking,” he said. “We got beat by a well-coached team that has a nice talent inside. We’ll just go from there.”
Euler and junior Troy Pierce were named to the All-Tournament team. Euler finished the three-day tournament averaging 14.3 points on 18-of-29 shooting, including 4-of-5 from three-point range, while Pierce averaged 12.7 points and 10.3 rebounds and blocked 8 shots.