Wildcats complete sweep of Paola with victory on Senior Night

Louisburg senior guard Brayden Gage passes the ball off to senior teammate Kohl Vogel during the Wildcats’ Senior Night game with Paola on Friday. The Wildcats rolled to a 51-33 victory.

The Louisburg boys basketball team
had a chance to sweep rival Paola last Friday during its Senior Night contest.

The Wildcats took full advantage.

Louisburg held Paola to just two
points in the first quarter and the Wildcats never let up in the 51-33 victory.
The win gave seniors Brayden Gage, Kohl Vogel, Dylan DeShazer and Noah Hill
some bragging rights as they played their final home game.

“It was definitely one of our
goals was to beat Paola and it meant everything with them being our rivals,”
Vogel said. “All of the seniors were ready to compete and that is what we did.”

Although they were able to pull
away offensively, the Wildcats (9-11) won the game on the defensive end as they
forced 28 Paola turnovers and Louisburg scored 20 points off of those mistakes.

Gage and Vogel and made things
difficult on the Panther offense as they consistently trapped the Paola ball
handlers at the top of the key and those steals led to several runouts.

For the game, Gage finished with a
team-high eight deflections and had four steals, while Vogel had a team-high
five steals to go along with a game-high 17 points.

“You could tell our kids had
something to play for and that the end of the season is near because we played
with that energy and really just made a lot of plays,” Louisburg Ty
Pfannenstiel said. “We started off slow, and with both teams playing zone,
sometimes that can happen, but our defense really sparked our offense. We got a
lot of steals, a lot of deflections and once we got confidence things really
kept going for us.”

Three of the four seniors got the Wildcats off to a good start as Hill started the game with four points, and in-between there was a Madden Rutherford 3-pointer to put Louisburg up 7-2. Vogel went on to hit a 3-pointer of his own, along with a pair of free throws and Gage hit a basket to give the Wildcats a 14-2 lead going into the second quarter.

The Wildcats expanded their lead
to 30-8 late in the second quarter after a basket from DeShazer and free throws
from Vogel, who went to the free-throw line 13 times for the game. Louisburg
went on to take a 31-13 halftime lead.

Along with the seniors, the Wildcats also got a good performance from sophomore guard Weston Guetterman as he joined Vogel in double figures with 11 points.

“It was a great team effort,”
Pfannenstiel said. “We talked the other day about everyone having their role
and they all have things that they do well. We just really stress that and
playing as a team and playing unselfish. Our energy was good and I thought
everyone was playing unselfish basketball. We don’t have any individual stars,
so it will take a great team effort to win and that was perfect heading into
postseason.”

Louisburg expanded its lead to 22 points at the end of the third quarter and the Wildcats were able to empty their bench in the fourth quarter to give their four seniors a nice ovation as they said their farewells.

“It was big to beat Paola on
Senior Night,” Gage said. “It is good to be able to say I was undefeated
against them my senior year in all sports. As for the other seniors, I think
they feel the same way and it was special that all four of us stepped up on
Senior Night and got the win.”

Postseason play now begins for the Wildcats as they are the No. 13 seed in the sub-state tournament and will travel to No. 4 Anderson County (14-5) for a 7 p.m., tipoff on Wednesday.

The winner of that game will play the winner of No. 5 Eudora (11-7) and No. 12 Tonganoxie (9-11) on Friday in the sub-state championship. Louisburg has played all three teams this season and have wins over Eudora and Tonganoxie and an overtime loss to Anderson County early in the season.

“They are familiar opponents, but
it has been awhile since we have played Anderson County and that is our only
focus right now,” Pfannenstiel said. “We have a little different look to us
now. We have added a little bit of depth. We were down DeShazer in that game
and I don’t think we went more than six deep at that time. It will be an
up-tempo game. They like to run and pressure, so we have to be able to play at
that tempo, but also know when it is time to be patient.”

LOU               14           17           14           6 – 51

PAO               2             11           10           10 – 33

LOUISBURG (9-11): Kohl Vogel 3-7
9-13 17; Weston Guetterman 4-5 1-2 11; Brayden Gage 3-8 0-1 6; Dylan DeShazer
1-4 3-6 5; Noah Hill 1-3 2-3 4; Ben Guetterman 1-3 0-0 3; Madden Rutherford 1-2
0-0 3; Julian Margrave 1-2 0-0 2. Totals: 15-37 15-29 51. 3-point field goals:
6, (Vogel 2, W. Guetterman 2, B. Guetterman, Rutherford)