Top Ten Stories – #1 – State Basketball Champs

Republic sports has never experienced more all-around success than in 2011-12. But in a field of success stories, one stands above the rest.

The girls basketball team overcame the offseason injury of center Alexis Edwards, survived a grueling Central Ozarks Conference schedule, and displayed the tenacity of champions on the way to their 2012 state title. After blowing through districts and sectionals, the Lady Tigers faced a tougher playoff road. They trailed at halftime in the state quarterfinals before defeating Helias 46-37, then trailed at halftime again before defeating Miller Career Academy in the semifinals 56-49.

In the championship game, Republic needed one more comeback in the final two minutes to overcome Smithville 53-51, winning the program’s third state championship, and its second under head coach Kris Flood.

To commemorate the season, and to say thanks for your support of Republic Tiger Sports, I’ve gathered just about everything about their championship run into this one page, along with a couple of freebies: a commemorative poster, and the edited, full-game audio play-by-play of both Final Four games. Download everything you want, print it, copy it, share it. And thanks for following along for this great year in Republic Tiger Sports!

State Championship Archive

Here’s the full play-by-play of the state finals and the state semifinals with me and Rodger Wheeler.

And here’s a commemorative poster (left). Download the file and you can get it printed full-size (16″x20″) at Walgreens or another photo lab for whatever they charge to print it (I think around $10).

Here’s the summary from the state quarterfinals:

“They Flat Out Stepped Up”

Here’s the summary from the state semifinals:

Show Me Throwdown 

Here’s the summary from the state championship game:

One More Comeback Makes Republic Champions

Here’s a condensed version of the ending of the state finals:

State Championship: Audio Replay

Here’s the post-game press conference, courtesy of Rodger Wheeler at the Republic Monitor:

State Champions: Postgame Press Conference

Here’s video of the trophy presentation:

Trophy Presentation from David Brazeal on Vimeo.

Here are photo albums from Final Four weekend and the state quarterfinals.

And finally, here is the music/video tribute to the team that I put together after the season. This is my favorite thing I’ve done since starting the website.