Cardinals Begin District Tournament

The Soda Springs Cardinals are in the middle of districts this week but before district play could begin the final week of the season needed to wrap up.  Several teams in the district had split their regular season match-ups making every game played last week crucial to district tournament seeding.  The only two teams that already knew their fates were Wendell who had made it through conference play unscathed and Aberdeen who not only hadn’t secured a conference win but had not won a single game all season.  Of all the remaining teams Soda Springs was in the best position as they were set to face the winless Tigers in their final game of the regular season.  The Cardinals relished the thought of playing the bottom team to get themselves back on track after dropping the three previous games to conference foes.  Those three losses all but erased any chance of the Cardinals earning a first round bye in the district tournament.  While the Cardinals were very heavy favorites in their season finale they needed to make sure they did not slip up and cost themselves a first round home game.  

The Cardinals played that season finale in Aberdeen.  It did not take long for the Cardinals to take control of the game.  Soda Springs took advantage of their superiority by getting several players time on the court.  In the first quarter alone the Cardinals played nine different players with seven of them putting up points for the team.  All of that scoring led to the Cardinals earning a fourteen point lead at the end of the first quarter.  The second quarter was a similar result with five separate players scoring with several of those points coming from the foul line.  Perhaps the most thrilling moment of the game happened at the halftime buzzer.  A last second steal led to a nearly full court heave by Gavin Hansen that went in.  Unfortunately the officials waived the shot off determining that he did not release the shot in time and robbing him of the shot of the year.  Not that it would have made much of a difference in the final score, but I did watch the shot several times and it was clear that Hansen did have the ball out of his hands before the buzzer.  Nevertheless the Cardinals now held a comfortable twenty point lead over the lowly Tigers at the half.  As sometimes happens in blow out games the play got a little sloppy in the third.  The scoring output dropped for each team as did the accuracy while the turnovers increased.  That being said, the Cardinals continued to increase their lead.  During the fourth quarter the Cardinals did meet the threshold of the mercy rule and a running clock, ending the game early.  

After all the games were finished and everything was tallied the Cardinals finished with the three seed in the district tournament.  This matched the Cardinals up with the six seeded Tigers for the first round of the tournament.  That game had not yet taken place at the time of the writing of this article but will have by the release of this article.  I suspect that the Cardinals will control that game just as they did both regular season meetings with the Tigers.  If that opening game goes as most people suspect it will, the Cardinals will then have to hit the road to face a tough West Side team on Thursday night.  The two regular season games between these two teams were interesting in the fact that each one their road game.  Thursday’s game will most likely come down to which team can get hot from outside as each team has some very good potential three point shooters.  In addition to the outside shooting both teams have some very physical post players so rebounding will play a huge role as well. 

Check next week’s article to see where the Cardinals will be playing next and how their chances of making the state tournament look. 

Cardinals 21 17 14 8 60

Tigers 7 11 6 10 34

C. Thompson 12, G. Hansen 10, K. McWilliams 5, P. Ozburn 8, J. Horsley 6, L. Mellor 8, L. Martinsen 9, K. Harrison 1, M. Browning 1