Boerne Champion overcame some early foul trouble and a good outside shooting team on Friday night at Charger Gym to earn a district victory in boys basketball.
Champion defeated Buda Johnson, 60-47, and is now 6-1 in 26-5A and 19-5 overall. They close out the first round Tuesday when they host New Braunfels Canyon.
The Chargers had a rough start to Friday’s game after Braxton Burdick and Braden Baum were in foul trouble in the early moments.
“Talk about a worst-case scenario, having your two leading scorers with two fouls three minutes into the game,” Chargers coach Chris Adamek mused. “We’ve talked about adversity and fighting through things but it ended up being foul trouble that was our big issue tonight. Our bench came in, Hunter Lampkin and Justin Hill, and gave us some good minutes tonight.”
With the Chargers in foul trouble and Johnson hitting some 3s, it was a tight game but as the second quarter drew to a close, Owen Tate nailed a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give Champion its biggest lead of the first half at 33-25.
Adamek said the Buda team can light it up from the outside as good as anybody.
“That’s the best 3-point shooting team we’ll see all year long,” he said. “Even their big stretches the floor and shoots corner 3s.”
Once the game went into the second half the Chargers started to pull away. They opened up a 13-point lead by the end of the third quarter, 47-34, and extended it to 15 points at 49-34 after they scored the first two points of the fourth period, but Johnson went on a 10-2 run – hitting a pair of 3s – over a three-minute stretch and the Champion edge was trimmed to seven points at 51-44 with 3:55 left.
“They always worry me because they can hit shots and they turned us over a couple of times,” Adamek said. “It took us a couple of possessions to get adjusted, once we realized what they were doing we were solid getting in the lane and getting to the free throw line and finishing things out.”
Champion was good at the line and scored seven of its final points at the line. Other than a Charlie Georgelos 2-point bucket, the Chargers were 7 for 8 at the charity stripe to close it out.
“They’re really good so that’s a good win for us, we played really well and our attention to detail on their shooters and making them make tough shots every possession, that was a big deal,” Adamek said.
Jesse Peart and Charlie Georgelos both finished with 14 points, Braden Baum added 13, Owen Tate scored 11 and Braxton Burdick tallied 8.
Adamek didn’t substitute at all in the second half. The five starters played all 16 minutes over the final two periods.
“The guys were in a good rhythm offensively and two of the guys, Braxton and Braden, hadn’t played a whole lot in the first half,” the coach said. “They had fresh legs so we just kind of went with it.”
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