Carroll soars in 7th straight Holy War, but could it beat the 2018 title team?
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On this day in 2018, Bishop Carroll was 5-4 and looked like another middle-of-the-run City League boys basketball team.
The Golden Eagles went on to win their first state championship.
Exactly 730 days later, Carroll is 8-0. The Eagles are a top contender for another title. They are favorites at the upcoming midseason McPherson Invitational Tournament.
And they beat Holy War rival Kapaun Mt. Carmel 65-55 on Friday night for their seventh straight win in the series dating to Feb. 17, 2017.
Since two years ago Friday, Carroll has gone 41-8, and many of the players on this season’s team have been there for all of those games. Senior Tanner Mans was a contributor on that title team. Now he is a captain and the undisputed leader.
He said this year’s team as of Friday night could beat the championship team on the day the Eagles won it all.
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“There are a lot more shooters on this team,” Mans said. “Most of us were there, and we were babies compared to what we are now. I think we’ve matured a lot. Obviously we don’t have those guys from that team, but I think we have a lot of pieces that substitute.”
Carroll coach Mike Domnick was a little more hesitant on heaping on that level of praise but said it would be a good game, which is a far more fair answer. The 2017-18 and 2019-20 teams are constructed almost identically.
Two years ago, Carroll’s biggest asset was that every player accepted his role, even if it was to play the final five minutes. This group has followed the same path, Domnick said.
Two years ago, the Eagles relied on a senior leader, Luke Evans. He was their only senior and worked his way into The Eagle’s Top 5 team at the end of the season. Mans’ command of this team looks the same.
And two years ago, Carroll headed to McPherson for its midseason tournament, one of the toughest in Kansas. That is where this year’s path takes a right turn.
The Eagles return to McPherson again this year after a season away winning the historic Dodge City Tournament of Champions. But this time, Carroll won’t be considered a dark horse like it was two years ago. The Eagles are the No. 1 seed.
Carroll rode a four-game win streak into McPherson in 2018 and made it to the tournament title game against host McPherson before losing. It was its final loss of the season. Now, the Eagles come back looking to win it.
“All these teams have different identities that we don’t ever see,” Domnick said. “So it will be fun to come in and match up against special players. We want to do some special things. We want to build these guys’ legacies. We want to win the City League, something we’ve never done before.”
Friday night’s Holy War against Kapaun was a massive stepping stone for Carroll. The Eagles hadn’t been overly tested this season, including a 22-point win over last year’s 5A state champion Andover Central. The 10-point win felt comfortable from the sidelines, but Mans said it wasn’t.
“It’s always a good game,” Mans said. “We were locked in. We brought our A game, and they brought their A game. The atmosphere was crazy. I’d say there were 2,000 people in here tonight. That’s probably the most I’ve ever seen here.”
Kapaun won just eight games last year and went 6-10 in City League play. But so far this season, the Crusaders look like contenders for a return to the state tournament for the first time since 2016.
Kapaun entered the Holy War as the No. 3 seed in Class 5A West at 7-1 with its only loss coming by two points in the AVCTL/GWAL Challenge against neighbor Andover. The Crusaders are on their way back toward Kansas’ elite and gave Carroll its first game decided by 10 points or fewer in which the losing team scored more than 30 points.
Domnick said his team needed a push like it received Friday at home, and junior Enrique Lankford stepped up with a game-high 21 points, three shy of his career-high.
Lankford was forced to miss most of the 2017-18 championship season with injury. As a freshman, he would have contributed. He said sitting on the sidelines was devastating, but he got a long assessment at what a title-winning team looks like.
He said he would side with the 2019-20 team, too, in a game against the championship Eagles.
“I think with all of our guys being basketball-first guys, and now we’re all upperclassmen,” Lankford said. “I think we have ‘em.”
Carroll wrapped up the first half of the City League season with the win over Kapaun. The Eagles will be favored in every regular season game left, including every game at the midseason tournament, which begins for them at 6:30 p.m. Thursday against Wichita North.
The Eagles would need 15 more wins to complete its first undefeated season in school history. Even Domnick said he didn’t expect his group to be unbeaten at this point, but as the No. 1 team in the coaches’ rankings, that is the goal.
“We go into every game expecting to win now,” Mans said. “McPherson tournament is no different. I want to go get that championship from ‘em.”
This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 10:51 PM.