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Submitted by Coach Thomasson
      The Leakey boy’s team finished the season with 60 to 58 loss to San Perlita in the Bi-District round of the playoffs.  It was one of those nights where we wanted to see if they could shoot and they did making 7 threes for part of their 60.  Our boys showed great heart by never giving up during the game.  If you were in the stands it had to be one of those games where you just were never able to set down and watch.  We were able to out rebound them like we thought we should we just could not get a lead that would hold up.  A mistake or missed shot would turn into a lay-up, or we would not rotate correctly and they would get an open look at a three, and two of the threes happened at the end of quarters when we either had a lead or were even and that helped them stay close.  The one at the end of the third put them up by three and we just never seemed to get over it.   They made 4 of their 7 threes in the third.  We had our chances though.  With 20 seconds left Drew Shackelford caused a turnover under San Perlita’s basket and we were able to get three shots in the last 10 seconds and get fouled, but just could not make any of them go in.  If we played those guys ten times we would be them the other 9, it just was not our night to win and you can’t take anything away from them they played with an urgency that we just did not have.  Free throws played a big part in a close game for us.  They shot 14 and only missed 1, and Leakey attempted 16, but missed 7 of them.   I am very proud of these kids.  I know they were sad Wednesday after the game, but it wasn’t like we just lucked into the playoffs we were the only team to beat Knippa during district and that tells us that we are very close to being a team that can contend to go to the state tournament.  I had told the boys on Monday that if we play like we did against Knippa that we had a legitimate shot at going to Austin.
       I will miss Marcus, Mark, and Johnny.  Marcus has been such a big part of my time here in Leakey.  I will miss him because there is not a more even-tempered kid in Leakey.  Mark has been a patient kid. Biding his time while others were in front of him, but there is not a more coachable kid in our program.  If you tell him to run through a brick wall I honestly think he would try it.  And Johnny came out last year with very little knowledge of the game.  I appreciate the way he plays hard all the time and his quickness gave us a look in practice that we needed.  He has grown as a basketball player since last year, and I think that if he had some more time he just might have gotten to a point where he could have contributed.  Our young kids got valuable experience from this year, and I am very excited about our prospects for next year.   We played some good teams very close and San Perlita was still in the playoffs at the writing of this article.  We are very close to being a very good team and I am looking forward to our prospects next year with the kids we have coming back.  I again appreciate the support of the fans.  They were loud the entire game the other night and no one in the stands was more disappointed that these boys.  You almost feel like you left something undone when you get that close and come up short.  The experts tell us we can tell a lot about yourself from losing and the problem with the playoffs is you have to wait for almost a year to find out what that is. 
     Like so many other nights our team is hard to figure on who to stop because we had a different leading scorer.  Tanner Pannell led us with 20, he was followed by Emilio Navarro and Blake Thomasson with 11, and right behind them was Marcus with 8.  Next came Mark with 4 followed by Billy Chisum and Drew with 2 a piece. 
     It is heart breaking to lose this way, but that is the nature of the playoffs.  If the best team won every time then there would never be any reason to play and the experts would not have anything to talk about.  Thanks again to all who supported these kids and GO EAGLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To view more pictures of the send off visit www.hillcountry.com