The Washburn Rural Boys Basketball team participated in the Basehor-Linwood Basketball Invitational from January 19-22. 

They fought hard and finished 4th in the tournament, beating Piper in game one but falling to Junction City and Raytown in the following games. 

In game one, Rural beat the Piper Pirates 55-47. Rural played fantastic defense against Piper, holding the Pirates to 31/16/36 shooting splits. Junior point guard Jack Bachelor said, “We had good energy and good communication on the defensive end and that helped us succeed.”

Rural came out very strong against the Pirates splashing threes from the second the ball was tipped. Even the bigs were knocking them down. Junior center Lukas Hanks talked about what gave them the confidence to come out firing. “Everyone on the team can shoot, it was just ourselves holding us back. We started to realize we could space the floor by using our ability to shoot so we let it fly.” 

In the next game the boys fought hard but fell to Junction City 61-57. Junior power forward Jacob Hirschi said this was his favorite game with his reasoning being, “The way we played; it was a full team effort. Even though we lost it adds more motivation for our next game against them.” This proved to be noteworthy as the Junior Blues played JC again on February 7. Weeks after the tournament Washburn beat JC 54-51.

In the last game of the tournament the boys played for third place against Raytown South but fell 53-51.