TOPEKA — Call it negative reinforcement, call it tough love, call it punishment. Whatever you term it, it made the Emporia High boys everything in Friday’s game that they weren’t at the end of Tuesday’s game.
Branded “selfish” and “lazy” by coach Rick Bloomquist after Tuesday’s loss to last-place Topeka West, the Spartans took two days of practice abuse and channeled it into an almost magical one-game turnaround, using a high-energy team effort to crush Topeka High 58-42 in arguably their best performance of the year.
Selfish? Lazy? Whatever the Spartans had to endure this week pushed them straight through the looking glass, because the team that took the floor in Topeka High’s Dungeon was surreally different from the one on the EHS floor Tuesday.
“We got blistered pretty hard in practice — we deserved it,” said Taylor Euler, who scored 17 points. “Because we played extremely bad on Tuesday. And I think that shows the toughness of the team mentally — not just physically, but mentally, to come back, listen to everything that Coach says and take it to heart, and try to play as hard as we can for the team.”
Keyed by a 12-0 run in the third quarter that helped push its lead to as many as 18 points, Emporia shared the ball, aggressively attacked the Trojan defense and took few bad shots, finishing at 53 percent from the floor. Jacob Torres led EHS with 19 points, including 13 in the second half. He finished 6-of-9 from the floor and made all seven of his free throws.
“It’s a major relief right now,” Torres said. “Just especially to beat a team like Topeka High, who beat Hayden — and beat ’em by that margin, it feels really good.”
After Topeka High cut the Spartans’ 24-16 halftime lead to four early in the third, a Euler jumper from the right side made it 28-22. Then Greg Canales backed his man down and scored on a turnaround, Marcus Jamison followed his own miss with a jumper and Ryan Huth went up high for a tip-in off a missed three by Euler to make it 34-22 Spartans. At the other end, Topeka’s Onzay Branch missed a point-blank shot inside, Euler grabbed the rebound and sprinted to the other end, pushing in a tough guarded runner from about eight feet out to give EHS a 36-22 lead. Trojans coach Pat Denney called timeout, but right out of the TO, the Spartans pressed and got a steal, leading to a layin for Torres and a 38-22 lead. Emporia got out on the run again when Jamison grabbed a steal and started a two-on-one break with Torres, feeding him for a 42-24 advantage. From there, Topeka High never got closer than 12.
“That’s what I’ve envisioned all year,” Bloomquist said. “What you saw tonight is the type of basketball team that I had been envisioning. I’ve been saying it could happen, I thought (this was) the way we could play, and I’m just really proud of how they responded from Tuesday.”
Canales got off to a strong start, scoring seven of the Spartans’ 10 first-quarter points, including a layin inside, a jumper from the right side and a jump hook. He finished with 14 points and 6-of-7 shooting from the floor, also pulling down seven rebounds. Jamison also grabbed seven boards off the bench.
“That (12-0 run) was probably the one that put the dagger in us,” Topeka High coach Pat Denney said. “But the 12-0 run doesn’t happen if we’re shooting the ball better, and getting better shots. We’ve just got to find ways to attack a zone differently.”
On Tuesday, Bloomquist’s primary source of aggravation was the fact that Canales wasn’t receiving the ball as much as he wanted. Friday was a different story.
“He was stressing how we were playing individually on offense, and we all just need to work together,” Torres said. “And that’s what we were all focusing it on — getting it inside to Greg, and when he gets it inside, he also kicks it back out.”
Euler showed selectivity, attempting only one 3-pointer and shooting 7-of-15 from the field. Bloomquist loved the floor game he saw out of his senior point guard.
“I don’t think he took any bad shots,” Bloomquist said. “If he did, it wasn’t a bad shot. Because a kid like that, you have to live and die by him, if he’s playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. ... And you saw the results tonight. He was as good a point guard as you’re going to find tonight.”
The punishment the Spartans went through in practice on Wednesday and Thursday is something Bloomquist feels was worthwhile — and he thinks they’ll forget it and leave it behind.
“(It hasn’t) been fun, and the thing is that, sometimes as coaches, you have to do things that are unpleasant,” he said. “Sometimes destruction is good. If you’re destroying selfishness, if you’re destroying laziness, if you’re destroying egos, if you’re destroying anything that will destroy a team, then that’s good. A lot of people don’t understand that, which doesn’t matter.
“What matters is the faces on those guys after this basketball game, the smiles and the way they were feeling, the cohesiveness we had, the partnership they felt after this game was just, you can’t measure that.”
Emporia boys 58, Topeka High 42
Emporia 10 14 18 16 — 58
Topeka High 5 11 13 16 — 42
Emporia (9-9, 6-5) — Gentz 1-5 0-1 2, Childs 1-2 0-0 2, Euler 7-15 3-4 17, Torres 6-9 7-7 19, Canales 6-7 2-4 14, Jamison 1-4 0-0 2, Huth 1-1 0-0 2, Essex 0-0 0-0 0, Bartlett 0-0 0-0 0, Ruiz 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 23-43 12-16 58.
Topeka High (9-9, 6-5) — Bryant 2-9 0-1 5, Anderson 1-4 0-0 3, Branch 5-11 1-3 11, Robinson 2-5 0-0 4, Jordan 2-3 3-4 7, Alexander 1-4 1-2 3, Mady 0-0 0-0 0, Wright 1-7 0-0 3, Stephens 1-2 0-0 2, Swank 2-2 0-1 4. Totals 17-47 5-11 42.
3-point goals — Emporia 0-3 (Torres 0-2, Euler 0-1), Topeka High 3-19 (Bryant 1-7, Wright 1-6, Anderson 1-4, Branch 0-1, Alexander 0-1). Rebounds — Emporia 31 (Canales, Jamison 7), Topeka High 22 (Jordan 7). Fouled out — Branch.