photo by: Conner Becker/Journal-World

Bishop Seabury junior Chase Honarvar (33) and senior Aidan Page (10) walk onto the floor during a game with St. Mary's on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023, at Bishop Seabury Academy.

The Bishop Seabury boys basketball team is headed to its first-ever state title game in its first year under head coach Trey Johnson.

Center Chase Honarvar led the seventh-seeded Seahawks with 24 points as they played a transition-heavy, aggressive style of offense to take down No. 3 Quinter 73-45 in Colby on Friday night.

They will face top-seeded Montezuma-South Gray in the 1A DI title game on Saturday. Seabury’s previous best finish in the state playoffs was third place in 2017 after it lost in a six-overtime semifinal game; it was headed for the semifinals again in 2020 before that tournament was canceled due to the onset of COVID-19.

Aidan Page tallied 17 points and Jace Smith 16 more for the Seahawks; Avery Briggs had 14 for the Bulldogs and Shea Salyers added 12.

Quinter had trouble stopping Honarvar early on, as the big man made three layups early to help Seabury get its first lead of the game at 10-9. However, he picked up two fouls — foul trouble was a frequent issue for the Seahawks in the first half — which slowed his team’s scoring pace down the stretch in the first quarter.

Even so, Seabury (21-4) was able to go on a 15-5 run, led by seven points for Smith, to force a timeout by Quinter. The Bulldogs were sustained almost exclusively in the second quarter by Briggs, who hit a pair of 3s and had 10 overall points in the period. Honarvar returned, though, after missing nearly a quarter, and showed some range with a couple of jump shots. The Seahawks managed to carve out a 31-25 lead by the break.

Honarvar extended that range even further with a 3 to open the second-half scoring. Briggs answered twice and Quinter got within five points, but Smith guided Seabury through a 11-0 run with a 3-pointer and a floater to give his team its largest lead at 16 points.

Salyers hit back-to-back 3s to give the Bulldogs some hope and bring the Quinter-friendly crowd back into the picture, but Honarvar quieted them in short order with a three-point play on a putback.

After trading buckets early in the fourth quarter, the Bulldogs offered little resistance down the stretch as Seabury used a game-ending 15-2 run to widen its final margin to 28 points.

Tipoff for Seabury’s matchup with South Gray (23-2) is set for 4 p.m. Saturday. The Rebels beat Olpe 68-62 in their semifinal matchup on Friday.

Baldwin bounced in semifinal

Third-quarter execution made all the difference Friday night as fifth-seeded Baldwin fell to unbeaten No. 1 McPherson in the 4A semifinals in Salina.

The Bulldogs shot just 2-for-7 from the field in the quarter and committed four turnovers, while the similarly named Bullpups hit their first four 3-point shots of the quarter and pulled far ahead. That canceled out a promising late first-half stretch for Baldwin and condemned the Bulldogs to an eventual 62-49 defeat at Tony’s Pizza Events Center.

They will play for third place Saturday afternoon.

Cory Muehler scored a game-high 26 for McPherson, double that of Baldwin’s leading scorer Cooper Carr, who was held to 13 points on 3-for-11 shooting. The Bulldogs were 7-for-12 from deep, led by Talan Torrez’s 4-for-4 day, but just 6-for-21 on 2-point shots.

Leo Schoenberger scored 11 points and Colton Collum 10 for Baldwin, while Kyden Thompson (15 points on 7-for-10 shooting) and Gabe Pyle (13 points, one of three Pyles playing for McPherson) had good days for the Bullpups.

Baldwin’s offense had been slow to get going early but used a 3-pointer by Carr and a pair of buckets from Schoenberger to take a brief lead; however, Thompson caught fire soon after, scoring nine of McPherson’s points in a row and vexing the Bulldogs with one aggressive drive after another. The Bullpups led by as many as seven points late in the first quarter before closing the period with an 18-13 advantage.

Muehler took the baton from Thompson early in the second, scoring twice to stretch his team’s lead to 10 points. But back-to-back 3s by Torrez and Joey Ziembicki — who have both vastly exceeded Baldwin’s single-season previous 3-pointer record this year — and a big block by Collum on Thompson in between got the Bulldogs back in the game and forced a timeout from McPherson.

The Bullpups were unable to restore their margin because of a lengthy scoring drought of more than five minutes in which they missed three straight attempts from beyond the arc. However, after Carr appeared to have tied the game entering the half on a transition layup off a steal by Torrez, Muehler found Gabe Pyle for a buzzer-beating 3 to put McPherson back in front.

That was just the Bullpups’ fourth successful 3 in 11 tries, while they were able to go 9-for-12 inside the arc in the meantime.

3-point shots accounted for the first five baskets of the third quarter, and the latter two were by Pyle again. They kicked off an 11-2 run for McPherson.

A timeout by Baldwin did not do much to help matters as the Bulldogs closed the quarter with two misses and two turnovers and trailed by 11 entering the final period.

They crept inside of single digits on multiple occasions, led by six points from Carr in the first few minutes and then eight more by Collum, but the Bullpups always had an answer. Owen Pyle’s putback with less than two minutes to go effectively sealed the result for McPherson (24-0).

Baldwin (20-4) will play in the consolation game at 2 p.m. Saturday against the loser of Friday night’s Atchison-Hugoton matchup.