North Kansas City prevails over Truman
High School basketball is back! After a long fall and a great year of high school football, we are now back watching and or playing the best sport there is. North Kansas City is a team with quite a bit of talent and should be one of the better teams around the Kansas City area, but Truman gave them all they could handle on the first night of high school basketball. Northtown was able to hold off the Patriots by a final score of 52-38.
Northtown at times, looked as if they could be a team to make a run at state, but at other times really struggled to move the ball on offense. Maybe this was due to some first game jitters, but they will have to get past that quickly if they plan to keep up and meet this season’s expectations. The final score did not depict how close this game actually was, and the Patriots actually took the lead mid the 3rd quarter. It was really the 4th quarter where Northtown showed their true colors and were able to pull away. On paper, this game shouldn’t have been close. When you look at the two teams, Northtown is stronger, bigger, quicker, and all around better athletes, but the Patriots showed that if you have heart and hustle, you can compete with anyone.
Truman is a very young squad who will probably go through some growing pains and struggles throughout the year. If they are able to play like they did on Tuesday night, they might surprise a few people and teams. Having North Kansas City and that home crowd on their heels pretty much the entire night made for a great game! It will be interesting to see if Truman is able to stay patient and unselfish on offense. They played as a team pretty much the entire game and moved the ball really well. They also played great half-court defense and although they were at a huge size disadvantage, they really didn’t get out rebounded too bad. The Patriots were hurt bad with fast breaks and not being able to score the ball very well. They actually knocked down quite a few shots when they were open, but Northtown made that very difficult with their tight defense and lengthy arms.
Top Performers for North Kansas City
–Deng Bol exploded for a dunk in the 1st quarter which gave his team a little momentum boost, and also was a huge defensive threat with some big time steals and blocks.
–T.J. Babikir was able to use his size on the smaller guards and get good looks underneath.
–Eric Slack played some great defense and had some big hustle plays that led to some easy buckets.
–Lance Rogers played well all around, but ran the floor very well and which landed him some easy layups.
Truman’s Top Performers
–Donald Edmondson has quick hands on defense, but was a go to for the Patriots. Expect Edmondson to be a bigger scorer this season.
–Kaimon Lennox is a smooth left with a great stroke. Excelled at getting to the bucket off the dribble and finding easy scoring opportunities.
–Keaton Wiley made some great hustle plays leading to scoring opportunities. Also found his teammates for simple buckets.