Holy Angels hangs on at Washburn

Prologue
A great battle tonight in section 6AAA as Holy Angels travels to Washburn.  A tough opener for Washburn especially with Holy Angels having 2 tough losses under their belt.  Love the beef hot dogs too.  Thanks to the AHA parents, I'm decked out in a restaurant quality AHA T-Shirt  But no Nestle's Nesquick jacket (picture of the rabbit mascot included) like one of the fans had.  I wouldn't put that on a third grader's lunch box if I were a parent (thankfully I'm not!).  Nice Washburn warmup shirts with "I am an athlete but academics is my game" on the back.  A message too often forgotten

Game Time
7-6 Holy Angels lead 2 minutes in before the Stars catch fire.  Sniper Tyler Emanuel with 1 triple and he adds 2 more to book end this big run.  Sam Gullickson with a 3 and Andy Jirik dominating inside.  The run is 19-1 over 4:45 and the rout is on, 26-7 at the 10:30 mark.  Cole Frechette with a layup on an inbounds and R.D. Brown with a steal for 2 and the lead is 34-13 with 6:40 left in the half.  The lead stays at 21 before Holy Angels starts to turn the ball over.  Clarence Thomas converts a steal for 2 to cap an 8-0 run and Holy Angels needs time.  Frechette puts back a miss to beat the halftime buzzer and the Holy Angels lead is 41-30 at the break.

Dwight Anderson with a bank and Clarence Thomas for 3 and the lead is 5 at the 16:15 mark.  Jirik taking over again.  He gets a layup and an old-fashioned 3 point play.  Jack Hogan with a drive for and Frechette with a great cut for an easy layup.  54-41 Holy Angels with 10:52 left and coach Reggie Perkins is not all happy in the Washburn timeout.  Holy Angels now going with the Swing Offense.  Washburn scrambling late and Frechette gets a layup with 2:30 left for a 63-52 lead.  Then it gets really interesting.  Thomas with a pair of free throws with 1:44 left and the lead is down to 64-58.  The Stars turn it over and DeMarco Gunn knocks down a 3 with 1:30 left and its a 1 possession game, 64-61.  66-62 with 35 seconds left when Thomas drives for 2.  Then Washburn sends Brown to the line (1-4 FTs to this point) and he misses 2 with seconds left and Washburn can tie.  They miss 2 good looks inside and Emanuel makes 2 free throws with 10 seconds left.  After an offensive rebound with 3 seconds left, the Stars need 2 free throws from Frechette to hang for the 70-65 win.

For Washburn, you could tell this was their opener.  The new implementation of the dribble-drive offense really struggled in the early going.  But Clarence Thomas is going to be a handful to defend in it, especially once he's played in it for a while.  He's the catalyst.  You won't see many nights where soph Dwight Anderson struggles with his shot like he did tonight (2-11 on my sheet).  Their athletes were really able to get after the Holy Angels guards and force turnovers.  I had Thomas with 23 points on my sheet but the Washburn jerseys are hard to follow so I may have confused some of his points with DeMarco Gunn's.

For Holy Angels, a nice bounce back win.  When they executed in the first half, Andy Jirik got tons of great looks.  A simple pin down to a post up got Jirik any touch you would want, yet Holy Angels got away from worked and went to the Swing for a large chunk of the second half.  I had Jirik with 18 points.  Cole Frechette with a nice performance as I had him for 17 and 11.  Tyler Emanuel with 11 of his 15 in the big first half run.  Coach McKenzie has the Stars playing very good defense as well.  They'll be sound, but I don't expect them to generate turnovers as the guards are not the kind of athletes to go out and hound people.