CHAPMAN, Kan.—
The Sacred Heart Lady Knights and the El Dorado Wildcat boys will play for championships tonight in the 1st annual Chapman Fighting Irish basketball Classic.The Lady Knights will play home-standing Chapman for their piece of the girls’ championship while the Wildcat boys will play Rossville for their piece of the boys’ Chapman round-robin championship.
Both the Sacred Heart girls and the El Dorado boys are the only teams, in their divisions, to emerge from the first two nights of the Fighting Irish Classic with undefeated records.
Sacred Heart earned their undefeated record with a 26-22 win over Rossville in Friday’s 2nd round action while the El Dorado Wildcats earned their undefeated mark with a 56-39 win over home-standing Chapman Friday night.
"I thought our kids came out, Chapman is pretty big inside, and I was wondering how we would handle that," El Dorado boys head coach Gary Melcher said. "I thought we applied pretty good perimeter pressure which helped us to keep them getting the ball inside like they wanted to. I thought for the most part we played pretty hard … we were far from great on offense but we were able to do enough to help us."
The El Dorado vs. Chapman boys’ game was the final contest on Friday and Melcher’s Wildcats came out firing and never looked back.
The Wildcats scored the game’s first points when Jared Haury sank two free throws 29 seconds into the game, the Fighting Irish then scored the game’s next five points to take a brief 5-2 lead, but the Wildcats put together an 8-0 run to retake the lead it did not relinquish the rest of the game.
El Dorado led 10-7 after one quarter, 28-15 at intermission and 45-28 going into the final period to secure the victory.
The Wildcats were led in scoring by Travis House’s 13 points while Haury added 12 and Aaron Rifel added 10. Chapman, which falls to 1-1 in the tournament, was led in scoring by Logan Lehmkuhl’s 11 points.
In the other boys’ game, Rossville edged Sacred Heart 63-61 in a contest that saw the two teams battle each other blow for blow.
Rossville led 18-17 after the first quarter, but the Knights came back to take a 34-32 lead into the locker room at intermission. Sacred Heart outscored Rossville 17-13 in the third quarter to take a 51-45 lead into the final stanza.
But in that final period the Bulldogs turned back the Knights, outscoring them 18-10 to earn the victory.
"We have not been shooting the basketball very well in our first couple of games," Rossville boys’ head coach Eric Anderson said. "We wanted to pick up our pressure and see if we could get some easy ones and we did that tonight."
Rossville was led in scoring by Jeff Immenschuh’s 17 points and was the only Bulldog to post double figures in scoring. Sacred Heart, which falls to 0-2 in tournament play, was led by Tate Richards’ 21 points while Tony Chaxez added 13 points for the Knights and Kane Comfort pitched in 10.
The Lady Knights of Sacred Heart began the play on Friday by edging Rossville 26-22 in another game where the two teams battled back and forth throughout the entire contest.
Sacred Heart jumped out to a 9-5 lead after the first quarter but only lead 14-11 at intermission. The two teams tied 5-5 in the third quarter and Rossville pulled within two points, 24-22, with just 12 seconds remaining in regulation.
But the Knights’ Tracie Thibault helped Sacred Heart seal the victory when she sank two free throws with 0:10 left.
"We just did enough to get the win," Sacred Heart girls’ coach Mark Ramsey said. "We did the things as we wanted to do. We made it to the free throw line as much as we wanted to but you have to make them. We talk about getting there but now we just have to get the percentage up where we want it."
The other girls’ game, was also a tight battle that saw the score tied three different times in the final quarter before El Dorado ended the contest by outscoring Chapman 14-2 in the final 3:49 of play, including sinking their final six free throws in a row.
"Finally in the fourth quarter we did a good job scoring," El Dorado girls’ head coach Shawna Riedy said. "Everybody kind of contributed and we started doing things right. We started making free throws. Everybody made free throws tonight."
The action will conclude on Saturday when the Rossville and El Dorado girls tip off at 2 p.m., the Rossville, El Dorado boys game is scheduled to tip at 3:45 while the Chapman, Sacred Heat girls’ game is scheduled to tip at 5:30 and the Chapman vs. Sacred Heart boys game will conclude the tournament with a scheduled 7:15 p.m. tip.
