Southern Coffey County and Crest reprised their season-opener Tuesday night for the opening round of the 1A Regional Tournament.
Like November?s results, SCC?s Titans came out on top at home against the Lancers, 46-33.
The Titans advance to the semifinal game at Olpe.
Crest ends its season at 8-11.
?At the first of the year we took five kids who had never played together and tried to mold them into a team,? Lancer head coach Travis Hermreck said.
?Over the course of the year, they started to get more comfortable with each other. They worked hard and they wanted to get better. I loved it when practice started and I hated it when it was over. That?s how fun this group was to be around and you can?t say that about every bunch of kids.?
The long and agile SCC boys weren?t as dominant as they were in their season- opener, but their stifling defense more than made up for some offensive inefficiency throughout the game, opening on a 9-0 run and never giving up that lead in the following quarters.
?Their box-and-one was a little different than what we?ve seen this year,? Hermreck said. ?They?re longer and more athletic and it took us a while to get used to adjust. We put ourselves in a position where we were playing from behind and they?re a pretty good team.?
Even so, the Lancers recovered and managed to tie things up at 21 after a three from Crest senior Hayden Hermreck.
The Lancers, however, never got the go-ahead bucket. At halftime they trailed by two.
In that second quarter, the Crest defenders had locked onto senior forwards Dawson Leimkuhler and Kolgan Ohl and did a good job of keeping them at bay. Unfortunately, that didn?t last long.
Coming out of the half, SCC kept the Lancers scoreless up until the three-minute mark, while the Titans inched up their lead by seven.
The fourth quarter was a different game.
Leimkuhler, especially, got going. Nearly every pass he caught in the paint he was able to turn into a bucket, leading to a game-high 21 points.
?We wanted to make sure when they caught the ball that we had multiple help defender there to guard them,? Hermreck said. ?But then they made adjustments in the second half, which we knew they?d do, and it just became more difficult for us on the catch to get more people around their big guys.?
The lead stretched to 10 at the 6:50 mark and grew to as much at 17 before a final 6-0 run by the Lancers got them back within 11.
The Titans punched right back though with five straight and with under two minutes to play, it was apparent that the game and the Lancer?s season was over.
