Tuesday night, the Tri-City United boys basketball team saw its season come to a close with a 75-56 road loss to No. 3 seeded Glencoe Silver Lake. A slow start doomed the Titans as the Panthers held a 46-20 edge at halftime that allowed them to hold on for the victory.
“Our guys played really hard, but GSL is a good team. They have lots of good players who can handle the basketball and defend hard up and down the floor,” said head coach John Rumpza. “I believe we had them mismatched in the paint, but they countered our size with lots of physicality.”
The loss for TCU signified the end of a season that featured no shortage of ups and downs as well as memorable moments.
“We had a really interesting season. One that included a five-game winning streak and some stretches where a win was hard to come by,” said John Rumpza. “We had a lot of guys who really loved to compete. We played a really up-tempo style of basketball this season and my take was that when we could score, which we did pretty well at times this season, we were gonna be in the game and probably tough to beat. When we had an off scoring night, we were probably not as successful, because defense was not our strength as a team this season. The thing about this group is that no matter how tough the times got or how good the times felt, they always had a desire to compete and win. I really respected this group for that reason.”
The game also marked the end of an erra for a quintet of seniors, Luke Holicky, Connor Flintrop, Matthew Squires, Reggie Vosejpka and Abdoulaye Tandia, part of a record setting group that will be long remembered in TCU history.
“This was a really special group for me, partially just because this group of seniors is a great group of kids and I really liked the personalities of our team this year in addition to the way that this group played the game,” noted Rumpza. “This group of seniors were freshmen when I arrived at TCU, so it has been really special to see those kids grow into young men over the course of four years, even though I have only been their basketball coach for two of those four years.”
As for the duo of Holicky and Vosejpka, they became the first players in program history to score 1,000 career points.
“It was such an awesome week, because Reggie got his on a Tuesday, and Luke got his on Thursday of the same week. It was a very proud moment for TCU in general, but especially for the Vosejpka and Holicky families, for us as coaches, and for TCU Basketball,” recalled Rumpza. “Reggie and Luke have worked their butts off to become the players that they are and they both needed good seasons to reach this milestone, which they did. They both really played like seniors this season and they were our undisputable leaders on the floor.”
As for the future of the Titan boys basketball team, many changes are expected to effect the squad.
“We need to reboot going into next season as we make the move to the tough Big South Conference. We will need a lot of players to step up to fill the gaps that our seniors are leaving. We relied on all of them so heavily this year, and they will obviously not be here next season,” said Rumpza. “I hope the younger guys realize the work that our seniors put into this. We had a double digit win season, which was a success, but I think our seniors this season had their sights set a little higher. I hope the younger players in our program realize the level of work that must happen off the floor before seeing success on the floor.”
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