By Bill McMillen

sports@joplinglobe.com

GIRARD, Kan. — Defense wins championships in basketball, too.

The Girard High School Trojans held St. Mary’s-Colgan to 36 percent shooting from the field Friday night and posted a 51-46 victory over the Panthers to claim their second consecutive Crawford-Neosho-Cherokee League boys basketball championship.

The Girard girls played a little defense, too. The Trojans limited Colgan to 34 percent shooting in a 57-44 victory in Friday’s first varsity game, also wrapping up the CNC crown for the second straight season.

It was the first time in school history that either the boys or the girls claimed back-to-back CNC titles.

Juniors Tanner Poppe and Darian Kelly scored 16 points each for the Trojans. But even more importantly, Kelly and fellow guard Eric Strukel held Colgan’s top guns, Stu Jeck and Joe Wachter, to a combined 17 points. Jeck led the Panthers with 13 but, dogged by Kelly most of the game, never got into a rhythm. Wachter, who had Strukel near him just about any time he even thought about shooting, was helped without a 3-point basket, a major part of the Panthers’ arsenal.

“They knew that Joe and Stu were our main weapons,” Colgan coach Wayne Cichon said. “Kelly is a great defensive player. I think that gets overlooked sometimes. He’s long, very athletic.”

Girard coach Zach Martin was particularly happy with Strukel’s defense on Wachter.

“That’s a credit to Eric Strukel,” he said. “He did a great job on Wachter. He does a lot of things that don’t always show up in the box score.”

Kelly scored the final six points of the third quarter to give the Trojans a 34-32 lead and back-to-back baskets by Poppe pushed the margin to 46-38 with five minutes to go. The Panthers, pounding the offensive glass, pulled within 46-44 on Jesse Watt’s rebound bucket with 2:07 left but the Panthers made just one of their last five shots while the Trojans hit five of six free throws in the final 1:13 to put it away.

Girard, 15-5 overall, finished at 8-0 in the CNC. The Trojans will open Class 4A sub-state play at home Tuesday against Parsons. Colgan, finishing at 6-2 in the CNC and 16-4 for the regular season, will face Northeast on Tuesday in 2A sub-state play.

Girard girls, 57-44

Girard coach Brad Herlocker had three main points in his halftime speech, which game with his Trojans trailing 20-16.

“I told them that we just had to relax and play our game,” Herlocker said. “We were missing shots we usually make. When they didn’t go in… things just kind of snowballed.”

The second point concerned defense.

“I told them we really needed to step it up,” he said. “Because our shots weren’t going in, we weren’t able to set up our pressure.”

And the third point was over tempo.

“We needed to get out and run the court,” he said.

The Trojans got shots to fall, hitting their first four attempts in the third quarter. They stepped up their pressure defense, forcing 10 Panther turnovers after halftime. And they ran up and down the court, scoring 41 points in the second half after managing just 16 in the first.

Carly Twarog, a 5-foot-6 sophomore guard, scored a game-high 16 points as Girard improved to 17-3 while completing an 8-0 run through the CNC.

Sophomore Morgan Boore added 11 points off the bench and senior Alysha Poteat contributed nine points despite prevailing foul trouble.

The Panthers, ending up at 6-2 in the CNC, got 15 points from Lisa Elmer and 10 from Ashley Werner. Annie Dellasega scored eight off the bench.

Boore’s three-point play capped a 9-0 Trojan run for a 27-22 lead at the 5:33 mark of the third quarter and the Panthers got no closer than three the rest of the way.

Twarog scored twice from under the basket early in the fourth quarter as the Trojans beat the Panthers down the floor for three easy buckets to open a 46-33 lead.

Girard, 7-for-24 from the field in the first half, shot a sizzling 13-for-22 in the second half.

Colgan wound up just 15-for-51 for the night.