COLORADO SPRINGS — If J’on St. Clair were a less cautious man, if he allowed himself to give in to omens, then he could possibly get behind the vibe surrounding his Rampart boys basketball team.
Winners of eight of their last nine games, including Tuesday night’s 68-43 thumping of Fort Collins in a Sweet 16 matchup, the Rams would appear to be a viable possibility to become the first non-Denver area team to win the Colorado 5A championship since Palmer in 2000 — a team that featured St. Clair as an assistant coach.
The next game, a Great 8 contest against Doherty, a team Rampart has already defeated twice this season, is Friday — St. Clair’s birthday.
Most convincingly, there’s was Tuesday’s near-perfect display; a contest in which the Rams (23-2) forced the Lamb-kins — who came into the game riding a 6-1 stretch of their own — into turnovers on eight of their first 10 possessions of the game.
“We played bad but they generated a lot of that,” Fort Collins coach Monty Alcaraz said. “The stat of the night — at halftime we had 10 turnovers and only four rebounds.”
Even so, afterwards, St. Clair’s mantra was simply, “There’s still a long way to go.”
“Right now it seems like our season is getting better and better and we’re doing things that we’ve never done at the 5A level, but we’re not going to be satisfied with that — we want to keep going on,” he said.
There was only one moment Tuesday when it seemed Fort Collins (22-4) might actually have a chance to prevent the Rams from doing so. A 10-0 run shortly after halftime cut Rampart’s lead to nine, 44-35, and after a turnover, the Lambkins’ Nate McAuliffe had a layup attempt that could have put some real doubt into the home team. But the shot went awry and Jacob Kimsey scored on a fast-break layup of his own, starting a 16-2 spurt that was more representative of the evening.
“I don’t know what happened; we had a 20-something-point lead and all of a sudden it was down to nine,” Rampart guard Reuben Riggs-Russell said. “We just told ourselves we had to pull it together and we did.”
Riggs-Russell led Rampart with 15 points; Austin Maag had 17 for Fort Collins.
Fort Collins 7 18 12 6 — 43
Rampart 23 18 9 18 — 68
Fort Collins— McAuliffe 0 2-3 11, Marum 4 0-0 8, C. Spicer 0 2-2 2, Maag 3 5-8, 17, Svitavsky 1 0-0 2, Wood 1 0-0 2, J. Spicer 0 0-0 0, Yancey 0 0-0 0, Fleener 0 0-0 0, Brakke 0 0-0 0, Kelley 0 0-0 0. Totals 9 9-13 43.
Rampart — Shorts 4 1-2 9, Grant 2 0-2 4, Riggs-Russell 5 6-6 16, Koehler 2 0-0 10, Evans 4 0-0 8, Roman 0 5-6 5, Peete 1 0-0 5, Kimsey 1 4-4 9, Hower 0 0-0 3, Saunders 0 0-0 0, Hellings 0 0-0 0. Totals 19 16-20 68.
3-pt. goals — McAuliffe 3, Maag 2; Koehler 2, Hower, Peete.
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com
