Falling one win shy of the state tournament for the second time in three years, the SEK League champion Chanute Blue Comets boys fell to the Eudora Cardinals, 56-43, in Saturday’s KSHSAA 4A East Sub-State title game.
“It was a disappointing one to not be able to get the ball in the hole,” Chanute head coach Devon Crabtree said. “We let their leading scorer lead everybody in scoring. This was just a different game from what we’ve done on the run we’ve been on. The kids still battled hard. They rode waves of things not going their way. We just couldn’t get the ball to fall.”
Chanute’s offensive woes in the loss were perpetual. After overcoming a double-digit deficit and trimming the halftime margin to five points, Chanute held Eudora to nine points in the third quarter.
The Cardinals extended their lead with those nine points. The Blue Comets scored a dozen points in the entire second half.
Warrick Olson, the Blue Comets’ leading scorer, was limited to one 3-pointer and a pair of technical free throws.
Daniel Stanley’s 12 points led Chanute.
“The physicality got to us a little bit,” Crabtree said. “We wanted fouls early and weren’t getting them. That affected us. We still had some great looks. We ran the stuff we wanted to do. I just think things weren’t going our way. We didn’t turn it over a ton. I don’t know what we would’ve done differently if we were to replay that game. We just missed some shots we were making.”
Eudora built an arm’s length advantage early by attacking the offensive glass.
“It’s tough to rebound out of a zone at times,” Crabtree said. “It was just one guy that really hurt us early. One of our keys was to rebound out of our zone. We just didn’t do it well enough in the first half. I’m glad we cleaned it up some in the second half.”
Cash Schneider led Eudora with 29 points. The Cardinals buried five of their eight 3-pointers in the first quarter.
Chanute’s second ended with a 15-8 overall record. The Blue Comets also won their second straight SEK League title.
“It’s a tough end to the season with what this group was doing,” Crabtree said. “It was an up-and-down season at times. But it says a lot with how the kids responded. Even in this game, we were down five at halftime after how the game started. That showed how they were able to respond to adversity. I’m just proud of them. I was lucky I got to coach them.”
Kobe Patterson and Easton Colborn are the lone seniors that appeared in Saturday’s game that graduate, leaving Chanute’s core intact.
“We have to remember this game,” Crabtree said. “We have to have the mindset of getting to where we want to be. That starts in the summer. We have to figure out how we can get past this round.”
Eudora is the No. 8 seed in the KSHSAA 4A State Tournament and will face Rock Creek on Wednesday in the first round.
