RTR Basketball

    Last night, I attended the boys high school basketball game in my hometown of Tyler where the RTR Knights played host to the Canby Lancers.  RTR was 19-1 on the season going into the game and Canby was 15-3.  I have attended many of the games played since I graduated and have felt that the competition has been somewhat down in recent years.  I graduated in 2007 and was a member of two state title teams and two teams that lost close games to Ellsworth to go to state.  Both of those years, Ellsworth went on to win the title.  The game last night, however, had an atmosphere that I have not felt since I was on the floor.  Canby is a physical team that can shoot the lights out at any second and also has one really good player down low.  RTR has a very strong starting five, and any or all of them can score a ton on any given night.  When it was all said and done, RTR notched another victory with a final score of 75-66.  The score does not even describe how close this game was all the way through.  Canby got off to a hot start with five early three pointers and took an early lead.  By halftime though, RTR had built its way back into the game and took a five point lead to the locker room.  Canby came out strong in the second half and cut down the lead and from there the lead see-sawed back and forth.  With little over nine minutes still left in the game, Canby's best threat at post fouled out of the game, which was a huge blow to the team's comeback chances.  They never gave up though, as they mounted a late comback that saw the game down to two points difference late.  After a timeout, that should have been taken when the lead was cut to six at the very latest, RTR came out strong and composed and finished off their opponent by knocking down a few late shots and hitting all their free throws down the distance.  The game was very physical, with three players fouling out and as many as seven more with three or four fouls.  The atmosphere was very intense and the refs had a very tough job and I thought they made a few bad calls against both teams, but they were only trying to keep the game from getting out of hand (which they did) and calls were made fairly both ways, good and bad.  I will likely have a blog later completely about reffing, as I have done that as well as coach for seven years.