When things start going off the hinges for a high school sports team, a senior needs step in and retake control before things get out of hand. In Saturday’s Colorado High School Activities Association 4A boys basketball state tournament second-round matchup between No. 4 Durango and No. 29 Elizabeth, that senior was DHS’ Kobe Szura.
Durango (21-3) got off to a fast start and had complete control in the first half. However, the Cardinals (12-13) came charging back in the second half before Szura decided he had enough. The senior slasher scored 11 of the team’s 22 second-half points, and made numerous defensive plays down the stretch to help the Demons regain control and cruise to a 60-43 victory.
Durango senior Kyle Kirkpatrick led the Demons with 19 points. Szura finished 16 points and fellow senior Malik Liggins had 11. The playoff win sends the Demons to the Sweet 16, and they’ll host No. 13 Evergreen on Wednesday after Evergreen beat Fort Morgan 59-53 Saturday.
“As as senior, I surely didn’t want this to be my last game,” Szura said. “When they made that run, all of us seniors kind of came together and agreed that it was time to just D up. We stuck to the script. We started playing our game again and everything came together like it always does when we come together as a team.”
The Demons fed off of a rowdy crowd and quickly built a lead behind a hot start by Liggins. The senior scored five of the team’s first seven points and racked up eight in a 23-point, first-quarter DHS outburst. All of Liggins’ 11 points came in the first half and Kirkpatrick racked up 14 first-half points to pace a 38-25 Demons lead at the break.
“I took my first shot and it felt good coming off, so I just started heat checking myself,” Liggins said. “I kept getting back on defense and defense leads to offense and our team defense is really what gave us that lead.”
The gritty Elizabeth team started knocking down shots in the third quarter and cut the lead to single digits in a hurry. The DHS lead eventually shrunk to six, but Szura came alive at the right time. He stopped the bleeding with a nice drive to the hoop for a bucket and helped force a 10-second violation that gave the Demons the ball back on the next possession.
The dagger, however, was a Szura 3-pointer that pumped the lead back up to 13 and the senior was cool at the line down the stretch to bury the Cardinals and give the Demons the opportunity to host at least one more game.
“Kobe’s the ultimate utility guy and he’s got that type of personality to where he just doesn’t care what anyone thinks about him,” Durango head coach Alan Batiste said. “What I mean by that is Kobe is the kind of kid that will do anything to help the team. He doesn’t need to please people by scoring a lot of points or getting all the glory. He’s an all-league player and although it might not show up in the scorebook, he deserves a lot of credit. He guards the best guys. He has worked as hard as anyone in his career here. You saw all that hard work he put in pay off (Saturday).”
jfries@durangoherald.com
