After winning the Ralph Miller Classic in Chanute last weekend with a 67-48 rout over Andover Central, then the sixth-ranked team in Class 4A, the Emporia High boys basketball team got more than a championship trophy and its third win in three days.
The Spartans played perhaps their best basketball of the year — especially defensively — in the win over Central and also in a 74-46 victory over Olathe North in the tournament semifinals, giving the EHS boys a needed spark for the second half of their season.
“It was a big confidence booster for us,” junior center Troy Pierce said. “We did really good on defense, which took care of the offense.”
What’s more, the Spartans got an added bonus when they got back to practice this week — some time off from practice. As a reward for winning the Ralph Miller Classic, the team got Tuesday off.
“I think they were really happy,” EHS coach Rick Bloomquist said. “I think they thought they had died and went to heaven, because they won a tournament and then they got the night off on Tuesday.”
But now it’s back to business. After taking a three-game journey outside the Centennial League to play in the Chanute tournament, the Spartans (6-3, 1-2 Centennial League) get back into the thick of the league schedule beginning with tonight’s game against Washburn Rural in Topeka at 7:30.
Washburn Rural (5-5, 3-1) enters tonight’s game with a .500 record overall, but the Junior Blues own a 3-1 record in the Centennial League, which Bloomquist believes is the best league in the state. Rural has a 74-66 victory over No. 7-ranked (Class 6A) Topeka High on Dec. 5 — High beat Emporia 74-64 on Dec. 12 — but the Junior Blues are coming off a sixth-place finish in the St. Thomas Aquinas Classic this past weekend that included losses to Shawnee Mission Northwest and Mill Valley.
The up-and-down nature of Rural’s season makes the Junior Blues a scary team in Bloomquist’s mind.
“I can’t put my finger on them. I can’t figure them out,” he said. “I’ve watched them play three times, and I know their personnel, and I watch their scores and I know who’s doing what, but I can’t figure out what’s going on with them.
“They can play awfully, awfully good, and they can be mediocre. They are a weird team to me, and that makes them scary.”
Tanner Speake leads Washburn Rural in scoring at 11.9 points per game. Jay Valerius is the only other Junior Blues player scoring in double figures with a 10.4 average.
The Spartans counter with two double-figure scorers of their own in guards Caydrick Bloomquist and Taylor Euler. Bloomquist leads EHS at 16.1 points per game with Euler chipping in 15.7 points a contest. The two have three games each in which they’ve scored 20 or more points.
“I think even when we have a bad outside night, it’s going to be OK enough to win because of the type of guards that we have,” Rick Bloomquist said.
Against Washburn Rural, Pierce, who is averaging nine points a game, said the best case scenario for the Spartans would be to build on their wins last week with another one over the Junior Blues.
“I think if we can continue to play how we did in Chanute and keep growing as a team and carry that over into more games, we’ll be all right,” Pierce said.