Menu
Tigers fight off 'Dogs
Anderson County, the No. 5 seed in the Fort Scott Class 4A Sub-State Tournament, gave Fort Scott High's boys as tough of a game as they've seen in their home gym in recent memory Thursday night.
But a couple of three-point goals gave the top-seeded Tigers some breathing room midway through the fourth quarter and Fort Scott pulled away at the free-throw line for a 66-56 victory that puts them into Saturday's finals where they will take on second-seeded Louisburg, a 55-42 winner over Iola in the first semifinal.
"As a coach, you coach the game. But I have to imagine that if you're a fan, that was an outstanding high-school basketball game," Fort Scott head coach Jeff DeLaTorre said. "It was two teams that were playing with a lot on the line. Anderson County was shooting extremely well and playing about as well as they probably could possibly play. We played well but we struggled at times. We did what we had to do at the end."
Fort Scott, 18-4, jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the first three minutes. Anderson County, 11-11, didn't get on the board until 6' 6" senior Josh Sutton got a layup with 4:48 on the clock.
The Bulldogs came out in a zone defense that may have been designed in part to keep Zach Quick from cutting into the lane for layups. But Tony Karleskint came off the bench to score six points in the period, including a tip-in as the horn sounded to put the Tigers up 15-7.
"We anticipated seeing zone," DeLaTorre said. "I talked to some people this week and I felt like that might be what we see. But when they have two 6' 4" guys in there, it's not as easy. When you play a team with guys about six feet, it's a little easier to throw it over the top and get a layup."
The Tigers wanted to control the Sutton brothers. Senior twin Jeremy scored 29 points in Anderson County's first-round win over Paola on the road Monday night. That much was accomplished early on. Josh Sutton scored all of Anderson County's points in the first period but three of them came at the free-throw line.
But with that much attention on the Suttons, Anderson County's three-point shooters found themselves open and they responded in the second quarter. The Bulldogs dropped six triples in the second period with Tyler Meeker's three-pointer putting them ahead, 31-29, at halftime.
"What happens when you play these guys is that you have to give a lot of attention to Josh Sutton," DeLaTorre said. "He's an outstanding player. He's a tough match-up for just about anyone they play. They really look to get him the ball. When we put all that attention on stopping him -- we were fronting him and giving help on the back side -- they started throwing it out to the other side and those kids stepped up and hit shots.
"Our kids had to make some adjustments because (Grant) Suderman and Meeker came out and hit shots and got hot."
Anderson County's three-point shooters cooled off the third quarter and the Tigers reclaimed the lead when Zack Smith stuck back his own missed shot with 3:18 to go. Chris Banks followed by taking a steal in for a layup to make it 39-35.
Derrick Sloan hit a three-point shot for the Bulldogs and Justin Ball followed with his only basket of the night to put Anderson County back up by one with 2:14 to go.
Karleskint took a pass from Quick and scored a layup with 30 seconds to go to give Fort Scott a 41-40 lead going into the final stanza.
The Suttons went to work for the 'Dogs as they combined to score Anderson County's first 10 points of the fourth. But the teams were matching each other score for score and the Tigers began to pull away when they started connecting on some three-point shots.
Smith's triple with exactly five minutes to go put the Tigers ahead 55-50. Kevin Gray followed with a jump shot to make it a seven-point game with 3:44 to go.
Meeker hit a three-point shot to close the gap to four points. But Fort Scott was able to work some time off the clock, running off over two minutes while Anderson County had to commit several fouls in order to finally put the Tigers into the one-and-one.
"We got that four or five point lead at around 3 1/2 minutes," DeLaTorre said. "We would have liked to had another basket or two. But they only had four team fouls. So we felt like if could move the ball and run the offense and look for layups, eventually they were going to have to foul us and put us on the line. We have the guys who will knock down the free throws."
The Tigers made nine of 11 charity tosses in the fourth quarter, all of them coming in the final 1:41. All Anderson County could score in that time was a three-point goal by Meeker and that came with 23 seconds to go.
Smith knocked in five three-point shots as he finished with a game-high 21 points. Karleskint, who made seven of 10 shots from the floor, added 16 points, his best game since coming back from injury a week ago. Banks finished with 11 points and Quick scored 10 while handing out six assists.
Josh Sutton scored 13 points to lead Anderson County while Meeker finished with 12 points and Jeremy Sutton scored 10.
The Tigers shot 43 percent from the field on 22 of 51 but made six of seven fielders in the fourth. Anderson County finished at 49 percent on 22 of 45.
Fort Scott finished with a 34-23 advantage on the boards. Gray led the Tigers with nine rebounds.
The boys' championship game will tip off about 7:30 Saturday night at the FSHS gymnasium. It will follow the girls' championship game, which starts at 6, which will pit the winners of tonight's semifinals.
Tonight's girls games have No. 3 seed Spring Hill, 11-10, going against No. 2 Louisburg, 14-7, at 6 p.m. No. 4 Iola, 10-10, faces top-seeded Paola, 19-2, at 7:30.