Knights move past Warriors

March 15, 2004

GENE JANSEN/For the Frontiersman

PALMER - The Colony Knights avenged their only Region III loss of the year by defeating the Wasilla Warriors 68-60 at Colony High Friday night, in their last regular-season prep hoops matchup.

The No. 2-ranked Knights will be the No. 1 seed as they head into the Region III tournament in Soldotna this weekend with a 16-1 conference record. Wasilla defeated the Knights in January, 47-39, in the first of their two regular-season meetings.

In a close contest until the final minutes, the Knights were able to add to their 28-27 half-time lead by hitting from three-point range. Rhett Magner nailed two three-pointers early in the third frame to extend Colony's lead to 36-21. He was Colony's high scorer with 19 points in the game.

Wasilla's Matt Crane scored eight straight points to help bring the Warriors within 37-35 with three minutes to go in the third. He was the game's high scorer with 24 points. The two teams exchanged leads for the rest of the third frame until entering the fourth quarter at 45-45.

With the score tied at 50-50 with six and a half minutes to go, Justin Schwartzbauer came up with the clincher to break the tie, 52-50, and from there, Colony's Ryan Gray came off the bench, going 4-6 on free throws in the last frame. He scored eight points in the contest and fed Cade Dickey with a key assist deep into the game.

Although Ricky Cunningham was held to six points in the game, he provided the Knights with critical rebounding down the stretch to help the Knights maintain possession.

The Knights held the Warriors scoreless for nearly two minutes down the stretch while they built a nine-point lead with two minutes to go. Wasilla's Matt Crane and Jesse Bean nailed three-point goals to help bring Wasilla back, 64-60, but that is as close as the Warriors got as the Knights went 5-of-6 on free throws by Colony's Cade Dickey, Schwartzbauer and Magner during the final 23 seconds, and Colony put the game out of reach.

Thursday, the Knights, Warriors and Palmer Moose will compete for a spot in the state tourney, held March 31- April 2 at the Sullivan Arena.

COLONY (68) - Ryan Gray 1 6-8 8; Justin Schwartzbauer 7 4-10 16; David Registe 0 0-0 0; Tim Egger 1 0-1 2; Rhett Magner 7 2-2 19; Ricky Cunningham 3 0-0 6; Cade Dickey 5 5-6 15; Kyle Coffman 1 0-0 2. Totals - 25 17-27 68.

WASILLA (60) - Jesse Bean 6 0-0 16; Brad Hobbs 2 0-0 5; Robbie Champion 1 0-0 3; Sammy Schafer 3 0-0 6; Matt Crane 11 2-2 25; Luke Schafer 2 1-2 5; Dustin Bragg 0 0-0 0. Totals - 25 3-4 60.

Three-point field goals - Colony 4 (Gray, Magner 3); Wasilla 7 (Bean 4, Hobbs, Champion, Crane); Technical fouls - None; Team fouls - Colony 13, Wasilla 20.

COLONY - 15 13 17 23 - 68

WASILLA - 15 12 18 15 - 60