Hosanna's Season Comes to an End

The Hosanna Christian School Lions rolled unbeaten through their conference season and moved into the play-offs. Starting four seniors, it seemed possible that this was Hosanna's year. They won their two regionals last week and tonight they moved into the second round of play-offs, with McKenzie High School coming to our home court from up near Eugene.

As expected, warm-ups were as close as Jordan got to the game. Coach Shaw stuck with his five starters for all but a few minutes of the contest.


Nevertheless, MelodyJoy was quick to pick Jordan out as the team ran its drills.


McKenzie is an interesting team in that it has no seniors and features junior Drew Wiley, a 6'7" post-slash-guard who supposedly has verbally committed to play for U of O already. He was a very nice player, especially at the Class A level, but it's hard to imagine him playing D-1. As Jeannette said, though, he's only 16 and probably has a lot of development and a few inches left in him. He has a nice shot, including from outside the arc, and nice moves. How he will do against players his own size and who are stronger will be interesting to see.

The game got off to a great start . . . very fast paced. Both teams were playing at a very high level and the first quarter ended 17-15 with McKenzie on top. But it was clear that HCS was going to have match-up problems with only one starter over 6 foot tall. Besides Wiley, McKenzie was taller than Hosanna at every position. In the second quarter, the Lions managed just one field goal.

In the end, HCS fell 56-40 to a very good McKenzie squad. They played good defense, were disciplined on offense, have talent and size . . . and even if they don't win it all this year, they'll be very dangerous next winter, returning every player on the team. It was sad to see Hosanna's season come to a close but the guys have a lot to be proud of.