Keller slips by Northwest

Posted on 18. Feb, 2012 by Richard Greene in Basketball (Boys), Northwest Texans

By Mary Wendell
The Northwest Texans will settle for the fourth seed out of District 7-5A after an overtime loss to Keller Friday at Fossil Ridge High School in the league tiebreaker.
Keller, who trailed most of the game, took the win 55-54 in the extra period to earn the league’s third playoff seed.
Northwest with the loss will face defending state champion Flower Mound Marcus Tuesday in a bi-district contest at Lewisville.
The Texans had controlled the game from the beginning, but in the last 20 seconds of the game, Keller rallied to tie the game and force overtime.
“We have got to play smarter,” said Northwest coach Mike Hatch. πWe aren’t that deep so it hurts to have two starters foul out.”
One of the starters was point guard Peri James, helping to give Keller late momentum.
“We let them get off the hook,” Hatch said. “We should have played with more intelligence.”
James and Todd Christensen have helped lead the team to victory this season.
“Christensen played great,” Hatch said. “He played like a horse. And James played smart and aggressive.”
James felt that there were just too many easy errors.
“We turned the ball over at the end too much and missed too many free throws,” he said. “And we need to control our aggressiveness.”
Christensen repeated a similar thought to those of his coach.
“We played hard but not smart,”Christensen said. “We really just need to cut down on turnovers and missed free throws.”