(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
COLORADO SPRINGS — The defensive gameplan for Manitou Springs worked for one quarter, but nothing was going to stop Colorado Springs Christian School from taking the Class 3A Tri-Peaks League title home with them.
The Mustangs (16-2 overall, 10-1 Tri-Peaks) started strong but Sam Howard proved to be too much as the Lions came away with the 47-36 win to claim the league title.
CSCS currently ranks No. 3 in the CHSAANow.com 3A boys basketball rankings with the Mustangs four spots underneath them, but it had been Manitou Springs sitting at the top of the Tri-Peaks standings since CSCS was beaten by St. Mary’s last month and up until Monday night, showed they were worthy of that placement.
“I knew it was going to be a dogfight, they’re a really good team,” Lions coach Mark Engesser said. “I listed them as easily a top-five team in the state at the end of last and we knew this was going to be a dogfight the whole time.”
Howard led the game in scoring with 16 points, but it took a while for he and the Lions (15-4, 11-1) to really get going. Coming into the game, CSCS felt that the Mustangs’ strength was in their guard play, but the early points for Manitou came from inside the paint.
Six of their first 13 points came from forward Steven Jensen as he was able to get Howard out of place and connect on easy baskets. The Mustangs came out of the first quarter with an 18-12 lead.
“If somebody can get a shot close to the basket, they’re going to take it,” Howard said. “I don’t think it caught us off guard, I just don’t think we followed the defensive game plan as well as we should have at the beginning.”
And that’s when the sleeping giant woke up.
The Lions went on an 11-2 run to start the second quarter and Howard accounted for six of those points. But the big key was getting their role players outside of Howard and Justin Engesser involved.
Pete Wilson was able to knock down some big 3-pointers when the Mustangs left him open in order to contain the big scorers. But that was all in the game plan.
“We just thought that if we contained Sam and Justin that we would just let those other guys beat us,” Manitou guard Luke Rodholm said. “If anyone was going to beat us, it wasn’t going to be Sam or Justin.”
By the time the fourth quarter rolled around, CSCS had a 39-30 lead and Howard had scored 13 of his 16 points. The Lions completely slowed the temp of the game and chewed up clock to walk off the court as league champions once again.
“We got spread out,” Manitou coach Ken Vecchio said. “It was a pretty simple thing we wanted to do and we just couldn’t do it. At the same time, defensively, then we quit making shots offensively and all of a sudden, it’s a 10-point game.”
The Mustangs got 22 total points from Jensen, Rodholm, Cole Sienknecht and Davyn Adamscheck. That quartet usually accounts for 48 points per game.
It was a great way for a senior class led by Howard to end their regular season careers at CSCS.
“It’s always fun when it’s a packed house on both sides, everybody’s enthusiastic and it’s going to be a close game,” Howard said. “Once we relaxed a little bit we got some energy from everything that was going on.”