But winning is always valued regardless of how it looks, which is why Randall was happiest Friday night leaving Joe Lombard Gymnasium.
In a game which wasn’t high on style points, No. 3 Randall found more ways to score which was the difference against No. 16 Canyon. The Raiders never trailed and left with a 58-40 win to stay undefeated in 4-4A play in their first meeting of the season against their Canyon ISD rival.
There was little flash in the win for Randall (18-3, 3-0 in district) but that didn’t matter in the end, as the Raiders found a way to get it done at both ends of the court. It was a far cry from last year’s meeting between the two teams in Canyon, in which the Eagles took a 19-0 lead and the Raiders never recovered.
“(The Eagles) get in that zone and pack it in there and they force to either take a quick shot or be real patient,” Randall coach Leslie Broadhurst said. “We don’t like patience much. We want to run, and we were able to get on a run in the third quarter where we scored three or four times in a row and got some separation. They were trying to slow us down and they were fairly effective at that.”
The first half in particular wasn’t an offensive extravaganza. Randall led 13-4 at the end of the first quarter and 24-14 at halftime.
Canyon’s Kelson Jones and Gage Lunsford were the two highest individual scorers in the game with 18 and 17 points respectively. Problem was, only two other players scored for the Eagles, and that didn’t come until the final three minutes of the third quarter.
Thomas had a co-star on the night for Randall, as Devin Baccas matched him with 12 points. Baccas had seven in the third quarter as the Raiders stretched their lead to 43-28 and pretty much put away the game.
“K.J.’s our guy and it’s really hard to guard him because he can score at any level and it gives me and my teammates and opportunity to score,” Baccas said. “He’s passing it to us and expecting us to score and that’s why we’re so good. Going into the game we knew (the Eagles) were going to be in a zone so we knew we had to stretch them out and get in the gaps.”
As such, Thomas became more of a distributor than a go-to guy, although he’s known for having parking lot shooting range. That’s also a part of his game which led him to signing with University of Texas-El Paso last fall.
“I thought he was doing a good job of getting it to the open guys and creating,” Broadhurst said of Thomas. “Luckily our team this year has got some other guys who can help him out and step up and they continued to do that tonight. Last year we had to have him get 25 to have a chance to win and this year we’re not quite as one-dimensional. We’re still glad to have him on our team.”
It was an uncharacteristically stagnant offensive game for the Eagles, at least as far as getting more people involved offensively than their usual top two scorers. Canyon didn’t get a single point from the bench against Randall.
Eagles coach Travis Schulte preferred to credit the Raiders for their play than point fingers at his own team.
“They’re a good basketball team,” Schulte said. “Kelson and Gage are our two dudes all the time. It is what it is. Our kids played really hard tonight. if we don’t get beat by nine in the first quarter, we’re in it close late. They’re the No. 3 team in the state for a reason.”
Randall 13 24 43 58
Canyon 4 14 28 40
R– Devin Baccas 12, K.J. Thomas 12. C– Kelson Jones 18, Gage Lunsford 17. Records: Randall 18-3, 3-0. Canyon 10-8, 2-1.