The hosts got the best of the home cooking over three days on the boys side of the Tatum Tough Tournament at Joe Lombard Gymnasium.
Host Canyon appropriately ended things Wednesday afternoon with another dominant performance for a third straight victory, rolling over Canadian 74-39 to conclude three solid days of basketball where it seemed the other three schools were unwelcome guests.
A look at the final scores over three days would indicate that the Eagles (16-4) were particularly rude to their guests, at least when they were in the court. They opened the tournament Monday night with a 77-41 win over Greenwood , then on Tuesday routed Bushland 81-54.
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Their record would indicate that the Eagles haven’t exactly struggled this year, but it was nonetheless a chance to work on things during what amounted to a break in district play over the holidays.
“It’s kind of odd timing for us that we’ve already started district and won one district game,” said first-year Canyon coach Kyle Lovorn. “We wanted to make sure that whatever we did over these last three days we got better and got us prepared for district. I feel like we handled our business pretty well. I feel like our team was very mature this week.”
The Eagles jumped on Canadian (6-3) early and didn’t let up most of the way. They led 44-14 at halftime as the final outcome seemed like a mere formality.
Nine of Canyon’s 10 players who got in the game in the first three quarters scored. Jordan Webber scored all of his game-high 16 points in the first half.
Clayton Wilcox had 14 points and Brox Hacker had 10 off the bench in the second half.
“There were some little things we worked on to get better at and use some guys in some different spots,” Lovorn said. “We were able to do that this week and it will pay off. This week we were able to get our bench guys some more minutes than we normally do and that may be the biggest key moving forward.”
Canadian, being a smaller school used to making deep playoff runs in football annually, has been trying to blend football kids into the rotation after getting a later start than most other teams. The Wildcats have only eight players on their roster right now, and that lack of depth showed against a bigger school like Canyon.
“I think there’s a lot of positive things to take away from this tournament,” Canadian coach Brandon Wall said. “One, we saw some great competition and we saw teams who play a style we don’t see a whole lot and you face pressure like we did today in Canyon, I think it makes us better in the long run. I’m pleased with our effort and it’s only going to help with the future.”
Riggs Pennington was the Canadian scorer in double figures against Canyon with 12 points. In their previous tournament game Tuesday, the Wildcats lost to Greenwood 65-52.
The tournament is named for Tatum Schulte, the daughter of former Canyon coach Travis Schulte, who coached the Eagles for 10 years before retiring last spring. Tatum died in 2017 at the age of nine after a lengthy battle with cancer.
Lovorn, who was an assistant to Schulte last season, was well aware of how important recognition of Tatum was to the community.
“Coach Schulte and my wife are first cousins so we’ve known each other for a long time,” Lovorn said. “Whenever Tatum was battling her cancer we kept up with them and we knew how important this young girl was to this community. Being able to do this is amazing and I’m very thankful for these teams who’ve shown up for this week and supported that.”