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Ricebirds' season ends with Lamar loss
El Campo made the post-season in 2006 and 2007. On Tuesday, Lamar Consolidated defeated the 'Birds 75-48 to officially end El Campo's season. If the Ricebirds had defeated the Mustangs, El Campo would have entered a one-game playoff with Terry for third place. Instead, Terry takes the third and final playoff spot in District 24-4A. El Campo finished fourth at 5-5 and 21-7 overall. After the loss, Head Coach Phillip Spenrath said he was disappointed to miss the playoffs, but said he felt his team improved throughout the season. "I'm very proud of them," Spenrath said. "One of our goals is always 20 wins and we got that. We ended up .500 in district. First of all, you want to make the playoffs, you want to go to the regional tournament and all those things. "We did accomplish a lot of things. We won a couple of tournaments and I think we got better as the year went on. I think district we improved and you've got to look still, going backwards think we did that." was 15-8. I told them, 'Seven points is manageable, but you can't get it to 20.' They came out and they outscored us that quarter pretty good."
Before the start of the fourth, Spenrath talked to his team about pride and concentration. "What I was trying to tell them was to stay focused," he said. "I didn't want them to think, 'Well, this last eight minutes is just going to be throw it up.' It kind of got that way. There's things we worked on and I don't like losing. I think we lost our focus there and I think some of them thought it was play time. We're better than that and we never want give up and we always want to try hard. I wanted them to understand that." Lamar Consolidated went on to finish with a 27-point win. Despite El Campo's loss, some of the highlights included great games by seniors Travis Pflughaupt and Kevin Gooden. Pflughaupt finished the game with a triple double with 18 points, 18 rebounds and 10 blocks. Gooden finished second in scoring with 16 including two 3-pointers. Once the game was over, the Ricebirds went back to the locker room and Spenrath talked to the team one last time. "There's not a lot you can tell them," the coach said. "Some of them are disappointed, some of them are mad, some of them walked out. I went around to the seniors for sure and shook their hands and thanked them. I have a lot of great memories with a lot of them. Like Travis and Anthony (Terrell) have been on the varsity (team) for three years and we've been places and won games. It's tough to let them go, but just as well, Sebastian Brown, I thought played some good minutes. Jac Axel, you never know what you get with Jac, but he played some good minutes." With more than 20 wins this season, the Ricebirds had what many would call a successful year. When time came to play against district teams, El Campo faced stiff competition. "It's a tough district, but then you look at the other districts and they're tough too," Spenrath said. "It's a tough region and a tough game. Hopefully, the kids learned something and had some fun and the guys coming back will work hard. I know a lot of them now are going to baseball and track. That's what special about El Campo - our kids play everything. Hopefully, they can excel in all of them and have a great time." 24-4A Boys Final BASKETBALL STANDINGS
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