The Purdy fans that traveled to Washburn to watch their boys’ and girls’ basketball teams compete for district titles on Friday went through a whirlwind of emotions. In the first game, the Lady Eagles fell to Miller in a heartbreaker.
But as disappointing as that game was, the second game made everything worthwhile. The Purdy boys jumped on McAuley Catholic from the tip of the Class 2 – District 12 title game and never looked back.
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Despite McAuley’s height advantage across the board, Purdy was able to dribble-drive and penetrate the Warrior defense all night long. McAuley has seven players that measure in at six feet tall or taller compared to just two for Purdy. That didn’t make a difference in this matchup between Ozark 7 conference foes.
“There are very few games where we’ve matched up size-wise with height and all that,” said Purdy head coach Tommy Egan. “We try to spread things out, use our quickness, really get after teams defensively and that’s just something that we’ve done all year.”
Purdy leaped out to a 21-13 lead after the first quarter. They widened that margin to 45-23 at halftime.
“We haven’t been in this spot a lot,” said Egan. “Actually, a lot of the year we’ve been down at half. We’ve been down eight, ten, twelve. So we really haven’t been in this spot a lot this year. We just talked about staying confident, doing what we do, not getting over confident but still executing everything we’ve worked on for five months now. They just came out and played their best game of the year on the night that we needed it the most.”
McAuley had no answer for senior guards Luis Cruz, Jonatan Salazar and Raul Garcia, all of whom are listed as 5’8” in the program. Cruz led all scorers with 24 points. Salazar and Garcia delivered 16 and 10 points, respectively.
“In past games, they were just killing us on boards,” said Cruz. “So coach was like, ‘listen, we’ve got to box them out, push them out of there just do what you gotta do.’ And that’s what we have to do to get the job done. That was the number one key that we had to do. We boxed out, they got a couple of rebounds here and there, but hey, we got it done. We got it done, we boxed it out, we pushed the ball up the floor and they couldn’t handle it.”
Coach Egan has been with this senior bunch since they were in seventh grade. As the final moments were winding down in the game, Egan pulled his starters. He then proceeded down the bench and embraced each player a hug and shared a few words with them individually.
“Of course, every coach has special moments with all their kids,” said Egan. “The fact that we’ve been together since the seventh grade, they’re just a tremendous group of kids. The teams that we play will tell you that. They play hard but they’re not dirty. They’re sportsman like on the floor, they help kids off the floor, they play extremely hard but they do it the right way. It’s just a special group of kids and it was a great moment.”
“We came in as three seed,” said Cruz. “We came in and we beat the second seed and we beat the first seed and now we’re district champs. I mean I couldn’t ask for anything better. This team, I mean they’re like brothers to me. I love them to death. They’re amazing. I’m going to miss this season.”
But the season is not over for the Eagles. They’ll take on Marionville in the Class 2 state tournament on Wednesday, May 2.
“This was our number one goal to win districts, but we can’t just be satisfied with that,” said Egan. “We can’t just say, ‘oh okay, now we’re done.’ We gotta get back in the gym and work hard and come out and just give it all we got. If we play like we did tonight, we can do some things. We’re not a bad team if we can do what we did tonight.”
Purdy – 21 – 24 – 24 – 14 – 83
McAuley Catholic – 13 – 10 – 24 – 17 – 64
Purdy – Luis Cruz 24, Jonatan Salazar 16, Tyler Keeler 12, Raul Garcia 10, Hunter Cook 9, Sydney Birge 7, Isaac Brattin 2, Justin LaNore 2, Ricky Albada 1
McAuley Catholic – Collin Lowry 14, Jake Doyle 12, Tommy Doyle 11, Hunter Huthsing 8, Cameron Bertoncino 6, Brendyn Tayler 4, Dylan Londo 4, Chance Jackson 4, Aaron Teeter 1
