Trojans show flashes of greatness, looking for consistency

Each Christmas season brings a great deal of quality basketball games to the metro as teams compete in tournaments across the area. With time off from school, it also gives coaches their last real chance to work with their teams extensively on certain areas of the game. But with Christmas over and the new year upon us, you’ll see high school basketball gear up for their conference schedule as they look forward to the all important district tournament.

Park Hill (6-2) starts their 2010 off with two very big games this week against Lee’s Summit West on Wednesday and Park Hill South on Friday night. They also happen to be home double-headers shared with the Girl’s Varsity team. Lee’s Summit West has not had a very good start to their season as they come in with a 2-6 record. It’s important to realize they’ve been playing against some of the best competition in the city of late, but have lost to two teams the Trojans have been able to win against, Lincoln Prep and Grandview. On the other hand, rival Park Hill South, comes into this week’s action with a strong 5-3 record after two very close loses to Rockhurst (46-42) and Hickman Mills (41-40) in another bracket of the William Jewell Classic last week. The battle between in-district foes could show us a possible favorite in the conference race as it heats up over the coming weeks and also be a possibly district match-up later on in the season.

After an upset victory over Grandview last week in the William Jewell Classic, Park Hill advanced to the semi-final round to play O’Hara with a record of 9-1. Unfortunately for the Trojans, O’Hara got out to a quick start in the first quarter putting up 16 points. Normally, that wouldn’t have been such a high number had the Trojans not posted a zero. As Coach David Garrison has been saying throughout this early season, it was a matter of consistency. Park Hill couldn’t get on the same page with each other on either side of the ball. Although it could be argued that Park Hill had more size and athleticism over the Celtics, O’Hara played a steady and composed game which didn’t allow the Trojans the turnovers they’re usually able to capitalize on. The margin stayed about the same throughout the rest of the game, never going below 13, before O’Hara pulled even further away to finish the game with a score of 80-55. Justin Leathers was the only Trojan to post more than ten points with his 22 in a below the bounds, clean-up man type fashion. O’Hara went on to win the tournament the next day by beating a very good Columbia Rockbridge team in double overtime.

With little time to reflect, the Trojans were back just under 16 hours later to play in the third place game against Lincoln Prep. This time they showed up ready to play gradually building a 32-27 halftime lead before really turning up the heat in the third quarter when they added another six to their margin. Leathers posted 27 points in addition to Chris Nsenki’s 11 and De’Aris Flint’s nine as the Trojans captured the third place trophy with a 66-49 victory.