In what ended up being one of the most successful Lady Blue Jays’ seasons of the 21st Century came to an end in the district semifinals on Feb. 22.
The West Platte girls’ basketball team (12-13) made multiple steps in the right direction throughout the year – which included its first postseason win on the basketball court in nearly a decade – but ran into the No. 2 seed and eventual Class 2 District 15 Champions. Polo (23-6) entered the matchup against West Platte with four straight victories and seven wins in its last eight games, before a strong second half lifted the Panthers over West Platte, 50-37.
The Blue Jays and Panthers were in a tight first half that saw two ties and five lead changes in the first eight minutes, with Polo holding a 16-11 margin. The Panthers pushed their lead to eight points in the second quarter before back-to-back left corner 3-pointers by Avery Holmes and a midrange elbow jumper in the final seconds from Colby Shepardson narrowed the gap to 24-21 at the break.
West Platte junior Colby Shepardson, above, is one of the four returning starters set to come back next season after the Blue Jays lost 50-37 to Polo on Feb. 22.
“I thought in the first half the biggest difference was that we were hitting shots when we needed to in order to give us a chance at half,” West Platte Head Coach John Kruse said. “Then we just had a really bad stretch in the third quarter, and it kind of got away from us.”
The three-point deficit at the half was the closest the Blue Jays came for the remainder of the night as the Panthers scored the first 11 points of the second half. West Platte went scoreless in the opening 2:30 of the third quarter and Polo led 35-21.
“We had the ball to start – and we talk all the time about the first few minutes of the third quarter being the most important no matter what the score is – and we came out and turned it over, they came down and scored and we turned it over again and then they hit a three. Then they stole an inbound and laid it in, and when you do that, it’s hard to come back on a team like that who is so well coached and as good as they are,” Kruse said.
West Platte finally got its offense rolling at the 5:28 mark in the third quarter starting with a putback layup from Madisyn Matlick, which was followed by a shot from downtown by Julia Pattison and a Katie Groom free throw, closing the gap to 37-27. Polo scored the final six points of the quarter to go up 43-27 and eventually eliminated the No. 3 seed.
In the third year under Coach Kruse, West Platte has continued to build in a positive direction: from two wins in 2019 to eight wins in 2020 and now 12 wins in 2021. The Blue Jays have implemented a new standard for the program after reaching multiple milestones throughout this season.
“There is a ton of positives: we won our first trophy in a tournament since 2016, we beat Lathrop for the first time since 2004, we beat East Buchanan for the first time since like 2001, we beat every KCI team at least once other than Mid-Buchanan and we had a chance to share the conference title going into the last regular season game – I don’t know the last time that has been the case for West Platte. There were a lot of good things that happened throughout the season, and we would have liked to be on the other end tonight, obviously, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that we did some pretty awesome things that the program hasn’t done ever or in a couple of decades,” Kruse said.
West Platte will have most of its team coming back next season as Groom, Hailey Shepardson and Ashley Goodwin were the only seniors this season. The Blue Jays will look to rely on the experience the underclassmen have gained in the past couple of seasons when they step back on the court next winter.