TOPEKA — It took 31 years of coaching, but Emporia High boys basketball coach Rick Bloomquist can finally say one of his teams won a badly-played game.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever had a team win a game after it had played so badly,” Bloomquist said. “You have the cliché that you have to win ugly, but this one wasn’t ugly, it was bad. We were lucky to win bad.”
Whether you call it luck or simply a never-give-up attitude, the Spartan boys managed to come back from a 10-point second-half deficit to earn a 59-53 victory over Topeka West Friday night in a game marred by a whopping 51 combined fouls.
“It was pretty rough,” EHS junior center Troy Pierce said. “You didn’t know when you were going to get a foul or not. You didn’t know how the game was going to go.”
After a first half in which Emporia High (3-2, 1-1 Centennial League) shot just 33 percent from the field, Topeka West (1-5, 0-4) sank its first four shots of the third quarter to extend its 31-27 halftime lead out to a 39-29 advantage just 2 minutes into the period, which forced the Spartans to call two quick timeouts to stop the bleeding.
Over the next 5 1/2 minutes, Emporia held the Chargers to just one field goal during a 12-2 Spartan run that tied the game at 41 after Dillon Cox skied for a rebound off a Taylor Euler miss and banked the game-tying shot home. The teams traded baskets over the remainder of the third quarter until Kyle deBlonk and Euler each knocked down 3-pointers from the wings give EHS a 50-46 lead heading into the fourth period.
“We came out after halftime and realized that we had to focus,” said Pierce, who finished with 7 points and 7 rebounds. “We came out and played how we should be playing.”
Emporia High never trailed after taking its 4-point lead into the fourth quarter. A jumper from Topeka West’s Troy Brooks drew the Chargers to within one at 54-53 with a minute left, but the Spartans iced the game from the free-throw line by going 5-of-8 in the game’s final minute.
“I think, just playing so bad, we had to come back out and redeem ourselves for playing so terrible,” deBlonk said of the third-quarter rally. “We came out and dug back and got the win.”
Though they allowed neither team to get in any sort of rhythm, the 51 foul calls possibly benefited Emporia more so than Topeka West because the Chargers’ two biggest threats — 6-foot-7 center Tyler Tunnell and hot-shooting guard Jamell Cervantez — were relegated to the bench with their fourth fouls early in the third quarter. Emporia High was shooting free-throws in the bonus just 4 minutes out of halftime and was in the double-bonus by the 2-minute mark of the third period.
Also, the Spartans only turned the ball over once in the third quarter and shot 8-of-12 (67 percent) from the field.
“We shouldn’t turn the ball over much at all. I’ve got good guards,” Bloomquist said. “We picked up our defense a little bit, and we played more as a team on the defensive end and got our hands moving. We played desperate, and we won because we were desperate.”
Some of Emporia’s best performances came from two players off the bench, as Jacob Davies and Seth Torres each put in valuable minutes and came up with big shots to boost the Spartans. Torres hit his first three shots from the field and finished with 9 points, while Davies sank an 8-foot jumper and a free throw late to help keep the Chargers at bay.
“I thought Jacob Davies gave us great minutes ... and I thought Seth Torres played within himself for the most part,” Bloomquist said. “There were some positives to this game.”
Caydrick Bloomquist led Emporia with 14 points. Euler added 10. Cox finished with 6 points and was one of three Spartans to snag 7 rebounds, Pierce and deBlonk being the others. Cervantez led all scorers with 19 points by going 7-of-24 from the field and 3-of-5 at the free-throw line.