Eaglecrest Eliminates Regis Jesuit

The Eaglecrest Raptors need an entire team effort to eliminate the Regis Jesuit Raiders from the 5A Great 8 Saturday night at the Denver Coliseum. Junior guard Colbey Ross who leads the Raptors in nearly every statistical category was saddled with foul trouble in the first half and played only three minutes. If that wasn’t bad enough for the Raptors they had seven turnovers and Regis sophomore guard Elijah Martinez scored 16 points in the first half. But the Raptors were far from out of it and only trailed by one at half time 31-30.

The Raptors got scoring from six different players in the first half. Junior guard Austin Forsberg  hit two key three pointers and junior forward Ikenna Ozor was perfect in the in the paint going five of five and hitting a free throw to lead the Raptors with 11 points. Regis had issues containing the active and strong Ozor the entire game.

In the second half Ross finally got back into the game and scored quickly but his time was short-lived and was back on the bench for a good portion of the third quarter. But that didn’t seem to bother the Raptors.  They clawed and fought their way to tie the game at  43 by the end of the quarter with again six different players scoring.   Geoff Kelly kept working inside and out for the Raiders tallying seven of the Raiders 12 points in the quarter.

Eaglecrest did not take a shot out of the paint in the fourth quarter, meanwhile Regis kept firing away from behind the three point stripe. However they did not convert shooting three of nine from deep and a majority of those rebounds going to the Raptors. Eaglecrest slowly but surely built a 12 point lead behind the high percentage shots of Ozor and Ross. Ozor scored nine points in the quarter and Ross sealed the game for Eaglecrest making 8 of 11 free throws down the stretch.

Eaglecrest will take on Rangeview Friday night at the Coors Events Center, game time is 7:00.