One Year Away

What a difference one year can make. While the Carroll girls beat all the teams they were supposed to last winter, a signature win eluded them. As unfair as that statement may seem for a 21-win team which placed second at the Class 5A state tournament, it's true. In two regular-season match-ups with Heights, a Newton mid-season tournament title game against Andover Central and the 5A title game against McPherson, Carroll was left searching for answers. How could a team this steady and talented win every game but the big ones? Carroll coach Don Racine could see future success coming when the class of 2009 were sophomores. A very successful league season that year ended with a disappointing first-round exit from sub-state. The 2007-2008 season then went much as expected - Carroll was a state contender. But the state's best - Andover Central (the eventual undefeated 4A champ), McPherson (the 5A champ), and Heights - which was everyone's No. 1 until Amanda Orloske tore her ACL at sub-state - had sent them packing. But what a difference one year can make. Carroll's prolific scorers from the '09 class, Abby Fawcett and Julia Marshall, now seniors, have reversed the program's fortunes. A year after two narrow defeats to Heights, the Golden Eagles finally got that signature win, 75-58 over Heights on Jan. 13. Fawcett used her quick release to undermine the Heights defense, hitting three-pointers off the dribble or coming off screens. She scored 34 points, including six three-pointers. Racine, Fawcett, Marshall and company can cement their place at the top on Feb. 24 when they close out the regular season at Heights, whose gymnasium is full of Carroll's 2007-2008 demons. After running smooth for two and half quarters and building a double-digit lead at Heights last season, Carroll succumbed to the Falcons' relentless defensive pressure. With just under two minutes left in the game, Heights had turned the tables, mounting their own double-digit lead on the way to victory. The Carroll boys faced their own demons entering the second half of this season after a tough go at the St. Thomas Aquinas mid-season tournament in late January. A loss at Goddard the following Tuesday raised more questions - the team was grinding. Losses at Aquinas by wide margins to Bishop Miege and Shawnee Mission South forced re-examination of the value of the narrow defeats they suffered in the first half of City League play. Four losses by a total of 12 points against Southeast, East, North and Heights had left a reserve of expectations for Carroll. Couldn't they have been atop the league with a few more balls bouncing their way? Their results at the Aquinas tournament and the rest of their City League season aside, the Carroll boys' own Feb. 24 match-up at Heights presents them a potential springboard into the 5A postseason. Their frontcourt of Blake Bell and Jon Peck and 6'3", 230-pound senior utility man, Joe Brown, still have something to say in their last season together. The Heights boys also hope to be rolling again by then. Freshman Perry Ellis' clutch performance down the stretch against Carroll kept the Falcons undefeated going into their mid-season tournament at McPherson, but then 2-5 Hutchinson upset Heights on a buzzer-beater, 51-50, in the first round. Ellis struggled to get shots off against an active, tight zone defense, but the team maintained their pride through the rest of the tournament, winning out in the losers' bracket - something even a top-ranked team might have lost the will to do. Still, Heights' loss to Hutch - a team consisting mainly of football players hell-bent on playing defense but who struggle to shoot well from the field - and Carroll's lack of fortune in Overland Park raised some questions about the City League boys' chances in Class 6A and 5A this season. Admittedly, history says such doubt would be jumping the gun. While the league hasn't had a 5A champion since Bill Carter-led Kapaun in back to back seasons, 1980-81, Wichita has dominated Kansas basketball's top class since the 1970-71 season, accounting for 22 of 38 6A and 5A titles awarded. (The KSHSAA added a sixth class in 1979.) Anomalous seasons happen, though. While the City League hadn't produced a clear 6A favorite at mid-season, the rest of the state hadn't either. Shawnee Mission Northwest and Olathe East are contenders, but they don't stand out. Which brings us back to Carroll and Class 5A - and adds East High to the conversation - because they both got a taste of Kansas' top basketball teams at their mid-season tournaments. Trevor Releford, a junior at 5A Bishop Miege, scored 31 points in a pullaway victory over SM Northwest in the championship game of the Aquinas' tournament - two nights after he scored 17 in a win over Carroll. East High played in an even more difficult tournament than Carroll, meeting the state's best team, 5A Topeka Highland Park, in the championship game of the Topeka Invitational. The Aces battled back from several double-digit deficits but lost the game in the fourth quarter, 66-53. Highland Park, a two-time defending state champ in 5A, earned the state's consensus No. 1 ranking for its effort. It and Miege sat atop Kansas hoops at mid-season. At least one of the City League's leaders - Heights, Southeast and East - will weed the other out by sub-state, however. All three are grouped among eight teams which will be divided into two four-team pods, and only one from each pod will earn a state tourney bid. Such an early marquee postseason match-up at sub-state is unusual for 32-team Class 6A, but they're common in the middle classes. The game everyone wanted to see at sub-state in Class 3A last season was Trinity Academy versus Wichita Collegiate. But the re-match of their thrilling 2007 sub-state final didn't materalize when Belle Plaine scored a semifinal upset of Collegiate. The match-up came better than late than never - this January in the Bluestem Classic final. Wichita's top two programs outside of the City League delivered off-the-charts intrigue. One overtime period wasn't enough to produce a victor - Trinity and Collegiate went three overtimes at the El Dorado tournament. Trinity's zone defense was plenty effective, knotting the game at 46-46 at the end of regulation. The zone did open up Collegiate's Blake Jablonski to hit 10 three-pointers, however. But for all of his game-high 30 points, the smooth-stroking junior wasn't the one to hit the game-winning three-pointer. Collegiate's steady team leader, Andrew Hourani, knocked down a trey off the dribble from the corner, sending the Spartans into the second half of the season with a undefeated record. Collegiate, the top team in Class 3A in late January, is also serving as the barometer for Class 4A this season. Trinity, which looks to contend in 4A a year after winning the 3A state title, gave Collegiate its best shot behind the play of a contingent of freshmen and sophomores. Matt Swank, a sophomore who scored 20 points against Collegiate, and his brother Micah, a freshman, will keep Trinity in the hunt over the course of the next couple seasons. Football players, Austin Kessinger and Morgan Burns, both sophomores, will provide the strength and athleticism. Another titan of 4A, Hesston, was scheduled to not only battle for their league title at Collegiate on Feb. 17 but also to gauge their own chances in 4A. Hesston won the Hillsboro mid-season tournament over Republic County to remain undefeated up to that point. The Swathers seek to one-up their consolation game win over Andover at last season's 4A state tournament with a title in 2008. The Andover boys also will be game once again. Taking the Coffeyville tournament title by a wide margin in the championship game over the host, a week after their 100-point scorching of one-loss Kingman, was startling. In fact, the overall basketball play of its high schools is the buzz in Andover. The same weekend as the boys, the Andover High girls also won the Coffeyville tournament, behind sophomore guard Taylor Tilson's 24 points in the title game against Cherryvale. And Andover Central, whose girls went undefeated in 4A last year, is mounting a return charge in their first season in Class 5A, after a slow start. They defeated Class 4A No. 1 Rose Hill on Jan. 20. The Central boys, eight-point losers to Goddard in the Chanute tournament final, still have a strong shot at making the 5A state tournament. Let the late-season heroics begin.