West Platte’s Ryan Pattison, above, scored 19 points in the opening round of the KCI Tournament on Dec. 7.
The last time the KCI Tournament was at North Platte High School, the year was 2013 and the West Platte boys’ basketball team won the championship on a buzzer beater 3-pointer from former senior standout Adam Roe.
Since then, the Blue Jays have been unable to imprint their name in the record books as KCI Tournament Champions, but they were hoping to rewrite history this year. In a revamped rivalry between West Platte (4-2) and Mid-Buchanan (5-1), the KCI teams met in the championship game for the second straight season.
After losing 58-42 to the Dragons in the early season tournament in 2020, the Blue Jays were hoping for a different result in 2021. However, history repeated itself and West Platte fell by a score of 61-51 on Dec. 11.
“Overall, I’m really proud of how our team competed in a very tough KCI Tournament,” West Platte head coach Tyler Funk said. “Second place in this conference tournament is nothing to hang our heads about.”
The Dragons were firing on all cylinders in the first half as the Blue Jays struggled offensively, and Mid-Buchanan led 26-8 at the break. In the KCI Championship, West Platte faced its largest deficit so far in the 2021 season.
Mason Montez scored eight of his 13 points in the third quarter and the Blue Jays trailed by 20 points with eight minutes to go in regulation. Tanner Rowe knocked down a pair of treys and had 10 total points in the fourth quarter to bring the game within single digits, but his 13 points on the night wasn’t enough to pull off the comeback.
“I think we just dug ourselves into a deep hole in the first half; we settled for quick shots that weren’t falling instead of being aggressive and getting to the basket. We battled back and cut the lead to six in the fourth quarter, but couldn’t quite come back,” Funk said.
The Blue Jays opened the tournament as the second seed and took on seventh seeded Lawson (2-3) on Dec. 7. The Cardinals didn’t play like a No. 7 seed, while it took a pair of overtime periods for the Blue Jays to pull out the 74-69 victory.
In a back-and-forth battle that went down to the wire, West Platte erased a six-point deficit to start the fourth quarter to end regulation tied at 59. After both teams scored seven points in the first overtime, Charlie Kinslow scored four of the Blue Jays’ nine double overtime points to lift them to a 5-point victory.
That was the second time West Platte scored more than 70 points this season as four players scored in double digits – led by Ryan Pattison’s 19 points. Trent Taylor scored 12 points, along with Xavier Reynolds and Dalton Hill who scored 11 points each.
“We definitely have areas that we need to improve and look forward to the challenge of fixing those areas. I’m proud we never quit and competed at a high level all week,” Funk said.
In a less stressful second round contest against third seeded East Buchanan (2-2), West Platte had its second largest margin of victory in the season, winning 57-28. The Bulldogs had a deep postseason run in football and didn’t have much basketball practice under their belts before the matchup, so the Blue Jays used that to their advantage when eight players scored.