Redemption.
That’s what it’s all about for the Emporia High girls and boys basketball teams tonight when they face Shawnee Heights.
Both teams are coming off what each considers embarrassing losses to Hayden on Tuesday, and the players now want to prove that the teams that played and lost three days ago are not the real EHS squads.
“We didn’t come out to play against Hayden,” sophomore Lexi Hileman said. “We’re all ready to go out and win. It’ll be a chance to redeem ourselves.”
The Emporia High boys hope to snap a two-game losing skid that has seen the Spartans play frenzied at times on offense and harried at times on defense. That in turn led to losses to Washburn Rural and Hayden, both games in which EHS held second-half leads.
“We all want to try to play better as a team and show that we are a real Emporia team,” senior Kyle deBlonk said. “We’re not the kind of team we’ve shown the last two games.
“We just haven’t been playing as a team. We’ve been playing more as individuals, and we haven’t been playing our roles. We haven’t come together as we should have in the last two games.”
For coach Rick Bloomquist, the frustration has been more about the team’s emotion rather than any physical problems the Spartans might have.
“Right now, we’re missing some hearts out there, and that’s hard to figure out,” Bloomquist said following the 60-53 loss to Hayden. “I can coach their feet, I can get to their lungs, I can get to their heads, but I can’t get to their heart. I don’t have any drills to get to their heart.”
And so the Thunderbirds, who are winless in the league, serve as the test to see if the Spartans’ hearts are alive and beating. With Shawnee Heights using a starting lineup that Bloomquist expects will look a lot like Emporia’s — three guards, a mid-sized forward and a big guy down low — the coach said he believed it would come down to playing “hard-smart.”
“If we play the way we’re capable of playing, the game will take care of itself,” Bloomquist said. “It’s a simple game, and we’ve got to make it simple.”
Sophomore Taylor Euler leads the Spartans (6-5, 1-4 Centennial League) in scoring at 15.7 points per game, followed closely by junior Caydrick Bloomquist at 15.3 points a contest. Junior Troy Pierce is chipping in 9.9 points a game for EHS.
For the Emporia High girls, they were left shell-shocked against Hayden after the Lady Wildcats hit their first 10 shots from the field in a 63-46 victory over the Lady Spartans (7-5, 1-4).
For a team that prides itself on playing tough man-to-man defense, the sluggish nature in which the Lady Spartans began the game against Hayden was disconcerting.
“It’s hard to tell what happened,” Hileman said. “Our focus was obviously not there. I don’t really know how that all came about.”
Prior to the loss to Hayden, the EHS girls had rattled off three consecutive wins in the Glacier’s Edge Tournament, including a title-game victory over Olathe East. Shawnee Heights actually played in the tournament as well, but never crossed paths with Emporia after losing in the semifinal round to Olathe East.
However, knowing that his team would face the Lady T-Birds down the road, EHS coach Bill Nienstedt snuck a peak or two at Shawnee Heights’ during the tournament. What he saw was a tall, physical team content to sit back in a zone and use its size to out-rebound and out-tough its opposition.
“We haven’t really seen a team just sit back in a zone and pack it in and use their size and strength against us,” Nienstedt said. “You have to attack it (the zone), but you can’t take a shot on the second pass that you could get any time. You have to probe the defense a little bit and see if you can get a better one.”
Junior Nichole Naab is averaging 11.9 points per game to lead the Lady Spartans, with senior Jessica Muckenthaler adding 10.3 points per game.