TJ boys roll to district semifinals
· Yahoo Sports
It was all Thomas Jefferson Independent Day School to begin Tuesday night’s first round matchup in the Class 2 District 12 tournament when the third-seeded Cavaliers faced off with No. 6 Verona High School at Purdy High School.
TJ (19-7) tallied 16 points in a row before Verona had an answer, and it didn’t slow down. The lead was 53-23 by halftime, and the Cavaliers went on to claim a 72-42 win to advance to the semifinals.
Visit asg-reflektory.pl for more information.
“That’s obviously the game plan. We talk about taking nobody and no thing for granted. Early, we wanted to come out and establish good defensive pressure and obviously we did that,” TJ head coach Chris Myers said.
Jack and Will Twiss combined for 19 points in the first quarter as Thomas Jefferson grabbed an early 31-9 lead after the first eight minutes. Will led the duo with 10 that period. Will tallied 11 more in the second quarter giving him 21 of his game-high 23 points in the first half.
Despite subbing in a lot of bench players during the third quarter, the Cavaliers won the third frame 15-10 and were led by big man Kohl Thurman with 8 points. Thurman, as well as Jack Twiss, finished the game with 16 points to join Will Twiss in double figures.
“Our big three have been consistent all year. We know we’re going to get points out of them every night. We had a bunch of guys in the scoring column tonight, which is always exciting this time of year to know you have a bunch of guys that can put it in the hole,” Myers said.
In the fourth, Josh Young scored all 4 of TJ’s points.
Verona won the final stanza 9-4 and got 5 points from its top scorer, Sean Lechner. Lechner finished the night with 19. Kyler Mace joined him in double figures with 12. The Wildcats finish their season 3-23.
TJ has two losses since January 15. That was the last time it lost to a team not named New Heights Christian Academy. In the last month and change, the Cavaliers have two losses and both are to the Cougars in the same week. They met them in the McAuley Catholic High School basketball tournament, lost by 13 points and then played five days later on their home floor and lost by 30.
This means TJ’s only losses in the last 40-plus days are against a Class 3 school. It has two wins during this stretch over Class 3 schools in Pierce City and Sarcoxie. It hasn’t been beaten by a Class 1 or 2 school since its loss against Wheaton on January 15.
“We feel like we’ve been playing pretty good basketball. … I think we’re competing night in and night out, and that’s what you want your kids to do,” Myers said.
The Cavaliers will face No. 7 seed Exeter High School on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. The Cavs and Tigers (4-22) met two weeks ago at Exeter and TJ won 85-43. But the Tigers just upset No. 2 Wheaton High School in the first round on Tuesday night by a score of 59-56.
“You want to be playing your best basketball right now. I guess that’s to be determined. We will see on Thursday,” Myers said. “Same mindset. We just had one with Exeter that went our way a couple weeks ago, but we just talked about not living in the past. Obviously, they got a big win tonight, so they’re going to be on top of the world. We can’t look past them.”
EXETER 59, WHEATON 56
It was a tight contest practically all the way through and for the entire second half. Wheaton had just defeated Exeter by 21 a week prior.
Dominik Palinkas led Exeter on Tuesday with 26 points, and he tallied 13 of them in the final frame. Brody Bateman led Wheaton with 23.
Wheaton led 13-8 after the first quarter of action. But a couple of treys from Edmondson Lokot and 7 total points from Palinkas and the duo had helped the Tigers to even the score at 27 entering halftime.
The Bulldogs came out strong in the third quarter and built a lead of 6 points at 45-39 heading into the final eight minutes. But Palinkas forced turnover after turnover and turned them into fast break layups as he led the Tigers back and to a win.
In other Class 2 District 12 action on Tuesday, No. 5 Purdy High School defeated No. 4 Jasper High School 47-43 to move on. Purdy will face No. 1 seed Lockwood High School on Thursday at 6 p.m.