Emporia High boys basketball coach Rick Bloomquist found a new way to describe a decidedly sluggish showing from his squad after Friday night’s 54-48 victory over Topeka West.
Upset with his team’s performance against the one-win Chargers, Bloomquist gave the Spartans the third degree.
“We were third-degree bad,” Bloomquist said. “We discovered three degrees of bad tonight. We have been bad before, and I think we discovered there’s a third degree to being bad.
“I’m disappointed in how we played.”
Emporia committed 18 turnovers on the night and let what had been a 14-point lead late in the first half drop to as low as three points with less than a minute remaining before holding on for the victory by hitting timely free throws down the stretch.
“The problem with this team right now is that we’re not moving very good without the ball on both ends of the court,” Bloomquist said. “We’re doing too much standing around and watching, and we aren’t taking shots in sync with one another.”
Still, Emporia’s worst in the eyes of its coach was enough to come away with the win over the Chargers (1-5, 0-4 Centennial League), though West put quite the scare into the Spartans (4-3, 2-1) late in the game.
A Brandon Childs jumper with 3 minutes, 51 seconds left in the game capped a 9-3 EHS run that put Emporia ahead by 11 points at 46-35 after West had cut the lead to five midway through the third period.
But the Chargers would not go away that easily, and a 3-pointer by Josh Blake started an 11-3 run by West that trimmed Emporia’s lead to 49-46 with 44.2 seconds left — with the last two points of the scoring spurt coming from two Blake free throws.
During that stretch, Emporia made just one field goal and committed three turnovers.
“We weren’t moving on offense, we weren’t moving on defense, we weren’t getting in the passing lanes,” EHS junior guard Taylor Euler said. “We were just watching everybody else. Whoever had the ball, we just watched them take it. That’s not how we should play; we need to play as a team.”
But Emporia staved off any chance of a West upset by hitting 6 of 7 free throws in the final 45 seconds, with Euler going 4-for-4 from the charity stripe for his only points of the game.
“That’s one shot that I feel comfortable with,” said Euler, who finished 0-for-6 from the field. “You’ve got about 15 seconds to concentrate on getting a nice shot. I was just focusing on my shot, and they went in.”
Emporia finished the night 14-of-19 (74 percent) from the free-throw line.
One bright spot for the Spartans was the play of Childs, who came off the bench in the third quarter to score seven points and grab four rebounds.
“I’ve been pretty hard on Brandon, there’s no question about it,” Bloomquist said. “He came in tonight, and I will give him credit, because he gave us a boost. He utilized his athleticism.
“Brandon’s a nice basketball player. But what I want Brandon to do is play the way I want him to play. He needs to know that I expect that out of him all the time, and in fact, he can do better.”
Troy Pierce also turned in an impressive performance, finishing with 13 points on 4-of-4 shooting from the field and 5-of-7 shooting from the free-throw line. He also finished with a game-high 12 rebounds and four blocked shots.
“Troy’s having a great season,” Euler said. “He’s not always the tallest guy down there, but he works so hard. You know he’ll come to play every night.”
Caydrick Bloomquist led all scorers with 20 points, while Alex North led West with 16 points and nine rebounds.
Emporia next will face a dramatically greater challenge next Tuesday when it plays host to Highland Park, the top-ranked team in Class 5A. The Scots have not lost a game in more than a year.
“(Our performance) is unacceptable when you’re getting ready to play a team like Highland Park,” Euler said. “We’ve got some work to do in practice.”
Emporia boys 54, Topeka West 48
Friday at EHS
Topeka West 8 15 9 16 — 48
Emporia 18 13 8 15 — 54
Topeka West (1-5, 0-4 Centennial League) — Blake 2-4 2-2 8, Lopez 0-0 0-0 0, Gray 0-3 0-0 0, T. Brown 4-12 1-4 9, Stewart 2-5 2-4 6, D. Brown 4-10 0-0 8, North 6-13 4-6 16, Mariani 0-2 1-2 1. Totals 18-49 10-18 48.
Emporia (4-3, 2-1) — Reimer 0-0 0-0 0, Bloomquist 7-19 3-3 20, Euler 0-6 4-4 4, Torres 3-5 1-2 8, Pierce 4-4 5-7 13, Canales 1-3 0-1 2, McAnarney 0-1 0-0 0, Childs 3-5 1-2 7. Totals 18-43 14-19 54.
3-point goals — TW 2-6 (Blake 2-3, T. Brown 0-1, D. Brown 0-2), Emporia 4-14 (Bloomquist 3-10, Euler 0-3, Torres 1-1). Rebounds — TW 28 (North 9), Emporia 34 (Pierce 12). Assists — TW 6 (Stewart, North 2), Emporia 6 (Bloomquist, Euler 2). Turnovers — TW 11, Emporia 18. Total fouls — TW 19, Emporia 19.
KUJayhawks69 (anonymous) says...
Why does the coaches son keep shooting? Any other kid goes 3 for 10 and a regular basis is not mentioned as a college prospect but an "assistant coach"!
January 7, 2008 at 1:46 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )