Caydrick Bloomquist admits it, he’s a little superstitious.
The junior guard for Emporia High believes he’s already been burned once this year, and he’s not about to let it happen again. Not with the way the Spartan boys basketball team is playing right now.
“I think we’re starting to click better, but I’m not going to say that too much, because I said that too early once before and I don’t really feel like jinxing ourselves,” Bloomquist said. “Right now, I’m just going to say we need to keep playing the way that we are.”
The No. 9-ranked (Class 5A) Spartans are playing more like the team they have striven to be all season long. The result has been two consecutive victories over Shawnee Heights and No. 7-ranked (Class 6A) Topeka High after EHS had dropped two in a row to Washburn Rural and Hayden.
Bloomquist won’t say it outright — remember, the whole superstition thing — but he did say that the way the Spartans are playing lends itself to more wins.
“That’s all you really have to do, just play well together,” he said. “If you do that, the wins will happen, and things will click.”
The Spartans (8-5, 3-4 Centennial League) look to take that improved team play to Topeka tonight to face Seaman at 7:30. The Vikings (4-11, 1-6) are coming off a 58-29 loss on Tuesday to Highland Park, the top-ranked team in the state.
Against Highland Park, Seaman used a zone defense to slow the Scots in the first quarter, as the Vikings led 10-7 after the first quarter. Then it all came crashing down for Seaman, as Highland Park got loose for 51 points in the final three periods.
Bloomquist, who leads Emporia in scoring at 16.6 points per game, said if Seaman used zone against the Spartans to limit the inside touches and penetration by Emporia’s guards, he was confident the Spartans’ outside shooters could crack the defense.
“We have great outside shooters, and they’ve got to respect that,” he said. “You have to add in the fact that our big guys inside are a threat, and if they play zone, we feel pretty comfortable against that.”
Joining Bloomquist in double-figure scoring is Taylor Euler, who averages 16.2 points per game.
Much like the Emporia boys, the EHS girls are riding a modest two-game win streak after victories over Shawnee Heights and Topeka High.
The problem facing the Lady Spartans tonight against Seaman (8-6, 4-4) comes in the form of Aubree Gustin and Breanna Lewis. On sheer size alone, Gustin and Lewis are enough to intimidate any team, as Gustin stands at 6-foot while Lewis is a monster at 6-foot-5.
Add in that Gustin is the leading scorer in the Centennial League, averaging 19.6 points per game, and that Lewis has already signed a letter of intent to play volleyball at Texas A&M next year, and the challenge is obvious for an Emporia team whose tallest player, listed at 5-foot-11, is sophomore Lexi Hileman.
“It’s a big concern,” coach Bill Nienstedt said of Seaman’s height.
Nienstedt said the key factors for the Lady Spartans (9-5, 3-4) would start on the defensive end, where rebounding and on-ball defense would be especially magnified.
“We’ve got to contain the dribbler better so that our defense doesn’t break down too much and our block-out assignments will be more clear,” he said.
Emporia won, 61-57, on Tuesday over Topeka High in a double-overtime thriller at home despite being out-rebounded, 45-31, by the taller Lady Trojans.
Junior Sadie Webb said that if the Lady Spartans didn’t make a commitment to improving on their rebounding performance against Topeka High, they might be in trouble against an even bigger Seaman team.
“We’re definitely going to have to box out well,” Webb said. “We’ll have to box out their bigs, because if they get offensive boards, it will most likely be two points for them. It would hurt us more against them than Topeka High.”
Nichole Naab leads the Lady Spartans with a 12.2 points-per-game average, while Jessica Muckenthaler chips in 10.9 points a contest.