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For the Diamond Wildcats, the last three days brought three wins, a tournament championship and a tournament MVP. Not bad.
Thanks to a stellar defensive effort all around by Diamond, the Wildcats beat the Seneca Indians, 49-32 in the championship game of the Seneca Tournament Saturday afternoon. After the game, Kyle Heman was named the tournament’s most valuable player. Heman had 15 points in the win over Seneca.
“I am proud of the guys. We won this thing on the defensive end. We really executed well on defense and played great team defense. We did an awesome job rebounding all tournament long,” Diamond coach Josh Cook said. “Kyle — I can’t say enough about the kid. He just keeps getting better every time we go out. He fought through adversity today. He actually took the ACT test early this morning and was just dead tired. But, he came out and executed and played well. He got hit in the mouth and was bleeding but he just kept fighting. I am so proud of this team. I couldn’t be more proud of them right now.”
In the first quarter, Seneca guard Kyler Ng was the only thing separating the Diamond Wildcats from a shutout. Diamond outscored Seneca 11-7 in that frame and Ng had all seven points for the Indians.
Ng finished with a game-high 18 points.
However, the Wildcats did a good job on defense the whole game and Seneca just struggled to get anything going.
Meanwhile, Heman and forward Logan Myers led a balanced Diamond attack. Just when Seneca keyed in on one player for Diamond on defense, another player would catch fire.
“Diamond is so versatile and they have so many guys that can do so much. I think they are going to give any team fits on defense. We knew that coming in and we tried a few new things that I just think our guys weren’t ready for,” Seneca coach Will King said. “But (Diamond) is just so talented and you have to give them credit, they have a lot of good kids who can do a lot of good things. They are going to be hard to beat, that’s a real good team.”
For Diamond, this is the second trophy they’ve brought home in as many tournaments this season. The Wildcats were the runners-up in the Pierce City Tournament last week, losing to Thomas Jefferson in the title game, 51-41.
For the Diamond Wildcats, the last three days brought three wins, a tournament championship and a tournament MVP. Not bad.
Thanks to a stellar defensive effort all around by Diamond, the Wildcats beat the Seneca Indians, 49-32 in the championship game of the Seneca Tournament Saturday afternoon. After the game, Kyle Heman was named the tournament’s most valuable player. Heman had 15 points in the win over Seneca.
“I am proud of the guys. We won this thing on the defensive end. We really executed well on defense and played great team defense. We did an awesome job rebounding all tournament long,” Diamond coach Josh Cook said. “Kyle — I can’t say enough about the kid. He just keeps getting better every time we go out. He fought through adversity today. He actually took the ACT test early this morning and was just dead tired. But, he came out and executed and played well. He got hit in the mouth and was bleeding but he just kept fighting. I am so proud of this team. I couldn’t be more proud of them right now.”
In the first quarter, Seneca guard Kyler Ng was the only thing separating the Diamond Wildcats from a shutout. Diamond outscored Seneca 11-7 in that frame and Ng had all seven points for the Indians.
Ng finished with a game-high 18 points.
However, the Wildcats did a good job on defense the whole game and Seneca just struggled to get anything going.
Meanwhile, Heman and forward Logan Myers led a balanced Diamond attack. Just when Seneca keyed in on one player for Diamond on defense, another player would catch fire.
“Diamond is so versatile and they have so many guys that can do so much. I think they are going to give any team fits on defense. We knew that coming in and we tried a few new things that I just think our guys weren’t ready for,” Seneca coach Will King said. “But (Diamond) is just so talented and you have to give them credit, they have a lot of good kids who can do a lot of good things. They are going to be hard to beat, that’s a real good team.”
For Diamond, this is the second trophy they’ve brought home in as many tournaments this season. The Wildcats were the runners-up in the Pierce City Tournament last week, losing to Thomas Jefferson in the title game, 51-41.
“The TJ loss pointed out to us what we needed to work on. That’s been our mentality this week. We are not a group that is going to be up and down confidence wise. This group knows how good they can be and they all know how good they are individually. We need to continue to learn from our weaknesses and improve on them. We need to put it all together. We put the running game on the back burner this week (to work on our half court offense). Now it’s time to bring back that running game and integrate it into our half court offense. It’s just a matter of being able to execute all of it and put together a complete game. Because we haven’t done that yet. We’ve shown parts that were successful but we need to put it all together. This team has a chance to be scary good. We haven’t really played a complete game and we’ve won 22 of our last 24 games (dating back to last season) or something like that.”
Other scorers for Diamond were: Ryan Jinks 8, Jared Huffman 7, Scotty Corn 6 and Chance Hardy 2.
Diamond (5-1) will be on the court again on Friday at home against College Heights.
For Seneca, this was the second 2-1 week in a row to start the season and King feels this Indians’ team has a high ceiling as well.
“It’s a good tournament for us. This was the first year we did and I am thankful to the other three teams that came,” King said. “I was pleased with our guys, but obviously, you want to win on you home floor and win your own tournament. But, we went 2-1 here and 2-1 in the Carthage tournament and we’ve got some good things going and this is a good team as far as how hard they work. I am excited about the rest of the year.”
Other scorers for Seneca were: Payton Rawlins 6, Elias Roelfsema 4, Dalton Lindsey 2 and Daniel Noah 2.
The all-tournament team consisted of Ng and Noah from Seneca, Heman and Huffman from Diamond and Lamar forward Ben Bailey.
Seneca (4-2) will face Neosho at home on Tuesday.
