Tigers prepping for 4A areas

Chuck Larsen
The Tuttle Times

TUTTLE March 02, 2007 09:15 am

— Twelve of the best basketball teams in Class 4A will be in Chickasha this weekend for their Area I tournament and two local schools will be in the mix.
Anadarko's Lady Warriors will join third-ranked Elgin and fourth-ranked Cache on the girls' side and Tuttle's Tigers will be in the boys' bracket with top-ranked Elk City and fifth-ranked Star-Spencer.
If you're not ready for baseball just yet, come on out to the Chickasha Activity Center and catch some of this tournament. This class combines the best of both the small school and large school games and will feature some teams that are very talented and fun to watch play.
The tourney starts Thursday with Clinton and Star-Spencer's girls and Elgin and Lone Grove's boys in the afternoon session. Brett Sanders' Lady Warriors face Dickson and Paul Meuser's Tigers will play Byng in the evening session. The four winners play Friday afternoon and will set the stage for Friday night's championships, both of which should be barn-burners.
Elgin lost one of their top scorers, Abbey Bassler, to injury but still have two kids who can light it up - Casi Rawls and Maggie Oliver - and they'll need them to beat Cache, a state quarterfinalist last year who has the talent back to go all the way. The Lady Bulldogs have some big-time scorers in Jena White and Taylor Thompson.
The Elks have one of the premier players in the state in OU-bound Cade Davis and are the odds-on favorite to win it all this year. They'll have to get by fifth-ranked Star-Spencer, who just missed a trip to state last year and has a strong and very athletic returning nucleus led by David Douglas and Josh Davis.
Friday afternoon's winners and Friday night's losers will be back Saturday night to play for the second state berth.
This is the second big tournament in the past two weeks awarded to Chickasha by the OSSAA because of the new facility. Sixteen schools and their fans were in town two weeks ago for wrestling's Western Regionals and now this 4A Area tournament will host another dozen to wrap up the first year of use of the new building.