Eudora’s boys basketball team won its first state championship in school history with a 71-58 win over Scott City on Saturday. Right before that, Santa Fe Trail’s girls basketball team took the Class 4A-II state title with a 58-54 overtime victory against Frontenac.

Eudora:

The Cardinals opened their semifinal game against Andale by shooting 2-for-22 (9.1 percent) from the field. In the state title game, senior Andrew Ballock helped Eudora shoot 7-for-12 in the first quarter with five baskets for 11 points. Freshman Mitchell Ballock continued the trend, as the Cardinals went 7-for-11 in the second quarter, with 10 points on four buckets. That shooting helped EHS to a 36-23 halftime lead.

Eudora stretched its lead to 19 points but all of its momentum vanished after coach Kyle Deterding was called for a technical foul for stepping outside of the coaches box. According to Deterding and everyone else on the Cardinals bench, there was no warning from the referees. A very surprising call in the state championship on any account. It seems like over the past few years, coaches have strayed further and further — especially in college — outside of the box on the sidelines that they are “supposed” to stand in.

The Cardinals led by 18 points at the time of the technical, then Scott City did the following:

-Made both free throws as a result of the technical

-Had back-to-back and-one layups

With Eudora’s lead cut to 10 points in the matter of 50 seconds, Deterding called a timeout. EHS sophomore Austin Downing scored immediately afterward but the Beavers scored on six of their next eight possessions and it was a two-point game heading into the fourth quarter.

“(Coach) just apologized and he said, ‘My bad,'” Downing said. “He shouldn’t have been on the floor but he was questioning why the ref didn’t tell him to get back because they get a warning. But he just told us to keep our heads in the game and not worry about that.”

Plenty of teams would have crumbled right there. Scott City was a three-time defending state champ at Class 3A. However, credit the Cardinals for withstanding a tough run and putting together a huge 6-0 run midway through fourth quarter to pull away.

Santa Fe Trail:

It’s funny how quick things can change in sports. Nothing was going right for Santa Fe Trail in the first 23 minutes and 58 seconds of the game. The Chargers shot 24 percent in the first half, and had only two points through much of the third quarter. Then senior Shelby Dahl changed all of that.

Inbounding the ball from underneath their own basket with a little more than 2 seconds left in the third quarter, Dahl took two dribbles and tossed up a heave from one step inside half-court. Money.

“That was a big momentum booster, going from down 11 to eight just like that,” SFT coach Jayson Duncan said. “She’s a special player. When you have the best player on the floor, good things happen.”

In the fourth quarter, Santa Fe Trail made three of their first four shots and went 7-for-11 in the quarter, one field goal shy of their total in the first three quarters of the game. Despite watching Frontenac tie the game in the final minute, the Chargers looked and played with so much more confidence in the fourth quarter and in overtime.

You also have to give a lot of credit to Santa Fe Trail for playing through a lot of foul trouble. Senior Amber Moore had four fouls entering the fourth quarter, and Dahl picked up her fourth with more than four minutes left in regulation.

6A state tournament:

Both of Free State’s basketball teams and Lawrence High’s boys basketball team fell short in their sub-state title games.

Free State girls couldn’t keep up with Manhattan, who took fourth place after losing to Maize in the semifinals and Olathe South in the third-place game. The Firebirds were within a few points in the fourth quarter against Manhattan and Olathe South, but fell short in both games.

Free State boys had trouble keeping up with the quick guards on Wichita Southeast, who lost in the first round to Wichita East. Lawrence boys fell short against Olathe East, who lost by one point to Maize in the first round.