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Temple rolls to Class A state title Sunday, March 18, 2007, at 5:49 p.m. - timesfreepress.com
By Jaime Lackey |
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Click to view Video: Class A basketball state finals from timesfreepress.com MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Coming into Saturday afternoon's Class A state championship basketball game, the Arts & Sciences Patriots wanted to forget what happened the first three times they faced Tennessee Temple. The Crusaders wanted to make them remember. Temple won its third state title in six years by beating the Patriots for the fourth time this season, 61-37, at Middle Tennessee State University. "We've played them a lot," Temple coach Kevin Skogen said, "and we thought if we could go out there and get on them quickly, they might start remembering those games and it might haunt them a little." His team outscored the Patriots by 39 and 34 points in two regular-season games before CSAS narrowed the gap to 12 in the Region 3-A final. The Patriots believed they had improved enough since then to make Saturday's game even more competitive, but Temple (32-3) scored eight of the first nine points and led 20-12 at the end of the first period. "We knew we had to come in and do our game plan and not take them for granted," tournament MVP Seth Skogen said. "We had a meeting last night to go over our assignments. We all bought into it, and that ended up being the game." He opened the second quarter with back-to-back 3-pointers for the Crusaders, and the Patriots never seemed to recover. The Mr. Basketball finalist finished the first half with 16 points on 6-of-11 shooting from the field, while CSAS went 6-for-20 in the first two quarters. "It affected us a lot," Patriots junior Dontay Hampton said of Temple's early run. "Usually if we get down, we at least have intensity, but today we didn't have any at all. We were totally dead out there."
CSAS had played impressive defense in its first two state-tournament games, but it wasn't enough to stop Temple in the final, when the Crusaders outscored the Patriots 20-3 in the third quarter. CSAS scored the first seven points of the fourth but shot just 25 percent for the game. Terrell Townsend came off the bench to score 10 points for CSAS (24-10), and Hampton had nine points and five steals. "Their defense was better than our offense," Patriots coach Mark Dragoo said. "So many of our shots were short. The easy shots weren't there. They just weren't falling." Temple shot 51 percent from the field and made 13 of 15 free throws. Skogen finished his career with 25 points and nine rebounds, while fellow senior Josh Smith added seven rebounds. Point guard Dee Newson, the Crusaders' other senior starter, had 12 points before leaving the game in the final minutes. He became overwhelmed with emotion after the final horn sounded. "I was just getting too excited," Newson said. "Coach had to calm me down. This means a lot. We've worked hard for four years. The whole year, me and Seth and Josh have been talking about this. It's been our goal the whole time." Coach Skogen understood Newson's feelings. "From the beginning, I've told Dee that I'm going to get out of his way and let him do his thing," he said. "I told him to play his game and run this team. I think the emotion was just him realizing he did it. He loves basketball, and he loves his teammates. He got the district and region MVP awards, and he didn't care a thing about it. This was the one he wanted." E-mail Jaime Lackey at jlackey@timesfreepress.com |
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Temple routs Patriots for state title Saturday, March 17, 2007, at 5:49 p.m. - timesfreepress.com
By Stephen Hargis |
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MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Chattanooga high school basketball was on display for the rest of the state as Tennessee Temple defeated Arts & Sciences 61-37 for the Class A boys’ state championship today at Middle Tennessee State University. It was the Crusaders’ third state title this decade. A Chattanooga team has played in the Class A final six of the last seven years and in eight of the last 12, but not since Riverside defeated Howard in the 1972 championship game had two Hamilton County schools played for a state title. That was the year before the TSSAA divided into classifications for basketball, and the only other time two Chattanooga-area teams played for a championship was in 1997, when Cleveland defeated Brainerd for the AAA crown. Saturday was the first time two teams from the same county played for a boys’ championship since a pair of Memphis schools met in 1996. Temple won all four meetings with CSAS this year by 12 or more points. Led by state tournament MVP Seth Skogen’s 25 points and nine rebounds, the Crusaders never trailed Saturday and led by double figures from the five-minute mark of the second quarter. The Crusaders, who have been to the state tournament five of the last six years, won previous titles in 2002 and ’03. E-mail Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com |
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Temple advances to Class A title game
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