ST. JOHN—Larned’s Brock Skelton broke out of a recent shooting slump as he scored 12 first-quarter points to spur the Indians to a 61-47 win for 7th-place here at the St.John Lions Club Mid-Winter Classic.
After shooting only 30% in a narrow loss to Nickerson on Thursday, Larned nearly doubled that percentage against the school from Kansas City as they converted 21 of 37 field goal attempts for a warm 57% and ran out to a 38-24 halftime edge.
Larned coach Jerrod Smith said, “It was nice to shoot better and get the win. This was a game that if we didn’t shoot better, well, we could have lost. We actually played well, played hard in all three games in the tournament, we just didn’t shoot well in the first two games.”
Larned used a lot of full-court pressure defense to increase their third quarter margin to 50-31 and then played a control-the-ball style in the fourth quarter to hold off the Panthers of Kansas City Christian. The Larned defense forced 19 turnovers from the Panthers and converted numerous of those into points. Larned’s Mason Perez was a thorn in the Panthers all evening with his stellar defensive play.
Coach Smith stated, “Yes, our defense was good. Actually, we opened in zone but I wasn’t happy with the way we were guarding so in the second quarter we switched to man defense and we became much more active and we did a better job on their shooters.”
K C Christian shot 20 of 45 from the field but made only 1 of 8 free throw attempts. They were led in scoring by Drew Hubbel and Brandon Engel with 11 apiece and Marc Trujillo added 6. The Panthers lost all three tournament games and saw their record fall to 4-6.
Larned made 21 of 37 field goal attempts and made 10 of 13 free throw attempts. The Indians were led in scoring by Brock Skelton with 20 while Mason Perez added 13 and Trent Fletcher contributed 9 to improve their season record to 7-4.
The Larned boys do not have a game during the next week but will jump into Central Kansas League action against Pratt on Jan. 28.
Larned 21 17 12 11 – 61
KC Christian 12 12 7 16 – 47
LARNED—Perez 6 0-0 13, Rupp 1 0-0 2, Smith 1 0-0 2, Skelton 8 1-2 20, Fletcher 2 4-4 9, Stelter 0 1-2 1, Thomas 3 2-2 8, Totals 23 10-13 61
KC CHRISTIAN—Schuchardt 1 0-0 3, Wichman 2 0-0 4, Tywater 2 0-0 4, Birnbaum 1 0-0 2, Hubbel 4 0-0 11, Trujillo 3 0-0 6, Engel 4 1-5 11, Spencer 3 0-0 6, Totals 20 1-5 47
