@ SMN

The Emporia High School boys basketball team’s winning streak to begin the season ended at four games as the Spartans fell to the Bison on Tuesday night in Overland Park, 44-37.

Shawnee Mission North scored the first five points of the night before River Peters got Emporia on the board, but the Bison then went on an 8-0 run before a Peters’ 3-pointer just before time expired made it 13-5 after the first eight minutes. Emporia trailed 20-14 at halftime and 30-22 after three. They were able to battle back in the fourth quarter but were never able to get the deficit within four points.

Head coach Lee Baldwin said the team succeeded in guarding the Bison’s best player in the first half but he was able to crack the Spartan defense in the second half due to some mental mistakes. “We had a lot of mental breakdowns in the second half with guarding their best player,” Baldwin said. “We held him scoreless in the first half but he had 15 points in the second half. So, we just need to be locked in and not have those types of mental breakdowns.”

Peters led the Spartans with 21 points while Stewart joined him in double figures with 14. Cooper Rech scored Emporia’s only other two points in the game. Baldwin is hopeful to find some other players to contribute offensively. “We’re getting really easy to guard and we need to have some other guys step up,” Baldwin said. “We don’t need them to score 8-10, we just need each guy to be able to knock down one or two shots. If we can get four or five other guys to give us three to five points a game, that’s the difference between scoring 37 and 50 and if we can score 50 every night, we’re going to be pretty hard to beat.”

Emporia (4-1) will welcome Great Bend to town on Friday night, Dec. 15 at 7:30 p.m. for the final game before the new year.

Emporia JV 52

Shawnee Mission North JV 57

JV Record: 1-1