Liberal Competes with Stacked Sunrise Team

Sunrise Christian becomes more stacked every year. When Liberal played this team during the early 2000’s at Dodge City’s classic, they were a group which was out-manned by most KSHSAA teams of Liberal’s size. Last year they were very talented led by 6’9" Raphael Akpejori who signed at Miami. This year, they are easily the most stacked high school team in Kansas. They aren’t affiliated with KSHSAA so they do recruit talent. Talent like 6’10" Gabriel Olaseni, 6’9" Eric Katenda, 6’8" Lawrence Fejowkwo, and their best player is a 6’4" guard Buddy Hield. That’s just to name a few. But Liberal lined up and gave great effort in a 57-36 loss Friday night at the Colby Community Building in the semifinals of the Colby Oragne and Black Classic. A Tyson Deaton three pointer brought Liberal within 11 (41-30) after three quarters. The problem was Sunrise’s length made it tough to score. Liberal shot just 24 percent from the field. Liberal’s leading scorer at 19 a game Jade Cathey drove to the basket desparately but was rendered 0-17 shooting with 10 rebounds. Deaton had 14 points and seven rebounds for the 6-5 Redskins. This snaps a stretch of four straight years in the championship game for the Redskins. Liberal plays McCook Saturday at 4 p.m. after Hays beat the Bison 48-33. Today’s game will air on B107.5 and kscbnews.net.

Hugoton let a lead slip and fell to Holcomb 48-38. The Eagles play Colby at noon today.