The ball just stopped going through the basket. “There are things you can control, you can’t control shooting,” Fatima coach Ryan Robertson said Friday night after the Comets dropped a 47-36 decision to the Father Tolton Trailblazers in the Class 4 District 9 Tournament title game. I don’t even think twice about it, the things we could control better, I will take the blame for.”
It was a rematch of last year’s district championship, but the Blair Oaks Falcons and the Father Tolton Trailblazers had a much different look Wednesday night. The result was the same, except the Trailblazers didn’t need a fourth-quarter comeback this time. Tolton nearly led wire-to-wire, locking down defensively to come away with a 56-34 victory against Blair Oaks in the semifinals of the Class 4 District 9 Tournament at Fatima High School.
This wasn’t how the season was supposed to end for the Blair Oaks Falcons. Not after a dominant regular season, not after winning 23 games in a row and especially not on their home court in their new high school gym. But geography paired the second-ranked Falcons and the fourth-ranked Father Tolton Trailblazers in the same district, meaning one of the two Final Four-caliber teams was going to have its season end in the Class 4 District 9 Tournament. It just wasn’t the Falcons’ day.
This wasn’t how the season was supposed to end for the Blair Oaks Falcons. Not after a dominant regular season, not after winning 23 games in a row and especially not on their home court in their new high school gym. But geography paired the second-ranked Falcons and the fourth-ranked Father Tolton Trailblazers in the same district, meaning one of the two Final Four-caliber teams was going to have its season end in the Class 4 District 9 Tournament. It just wasn’t the Falcons’ day.
Fatima’s comeback just ran out of time. The No. 3 seed Comets cut what was once a 16-point deficit in the second half all the way to one, but ran out of time to finish it off as the No. 2 seed Father Tolton Trailblazers escaped with a 45-40 win in the Class 4 District 9 semifinals Thursday night.