Winter Break has come to an end and the basketball season has continued. Junction City has had a less than average 1-3 start to the season. Tuesday night the Blue Jays hosted the Topeka Trojans who are only 2-3 on the season coached by Pat Deeney.

According to record, like Junction City, Topeka has been relatively mediocre for the past 4 years since they went 18-7 in the 2011-12 season.

In pregame warmups Topeka showed their ability to score from the three point line, while Junction City looked rather cold in their jump shooting. The Blue Jays would need to change this in order to beat this Topeka team without starter, Ricardo Erans in the lineup.

Junction City, despite their pregame looks, came out firing clearly running their offense through guard TJ Poole as he led JC to a 13-4 lead forcing Topeka to call a timeout. Poole was responsible for nine of the thirteen points.

Topeka was able to cut the deficit to just six points after finishing the quarter strong, with Mario King hitting two last minute three pointers for Topeka, making the score 17-11.

Both teams had a good second quarter not allowing any significant runs. JC did however allow their lead to dwindle down to just two points. The halftime score was 29-27.

The third quarter was owned by Topeka scoring thirteen unanswered points in the first three and a half minutes after a TJ Poole layup. This put Topeka in the lead 33-40. Poorly defending the “live by the three, die by the three” Topeka offense in which they were clearly living with against JC.

Topeka’s shutdown defense and ability to force turnovers only gave up nine points to Junction City and scored themselves 27 points. Topeka scored just as many points in the third quarter as they did in the entire first half. The score after three quarters was 38-54 and Topeka wasn’t slowing down.

In the fourth quarter Junction City’s offense came back to life but their defense wasn’t able to hold Topeka’s offense back.

Machias Jackson, the Topeka point guard, showed extreme talent with his passing ability, court vision and ability to run the Pick and Roll offense. Jackson was helping the Topeka offense score at will this quarter leading fast breaks and finding the open shooters in the half-court offense.

Junction City was also scoring at will by penetrating the paint and getting high percentage shots in the paint near the basket. Now that the offense was finally clicking, midway through the quarter Coach Battle applied a full court press defense. This was something that was called at the end of previous games. Like the other games, the opponent’s offense, in this case, Jackson and the Topeka offense was able to break down and get easier shots.

After an 8-0 run by the Blue Jays to come within twelve points, Topeka put their players in high gear and finished with a strong run of their own of nine straight unanswered points.

The final score was 57-76, a 19 point loss led by Topeka’s sharpshooters’ seven made three pointers creating 21 points alone.

This brought the Blue Jays’ record to a disappointing 1-4 to start the season. This Friday night they will be on the road to play Shawnee Heights. This is a must win to bring the Blue Jays back to life and start a much needed winning streak to spark us into the postseason.