The Keota boys basketball team travels to the state basketball tournament for the first time since 1989 this morning, when they take on Easton Valley in round one.

Keota beat a Van Buren team that was scoring over 70 points per game, while Easton Valley beat Danville.

The Eagles are 24-1 coming into the game, and scoring 64.2 points per game. They are led by Kolton Greiner and Luke Lyle, both scoring 19 points per game, but the real “X” factor for the Eagles will be their third scorer in Nate Owen, who is scoring 10.8 points per game.

Easton Valley comes into the game at 21-2, with one loss to a team from Illinois. They held Danville to 33 points, and average just under 70 points per game. Their leading scorer is Chase Zaruba with 23.6 points per game. He is backed up by 6′ 8″ Logan Wilhelm with 16.3 points per game, and Craiton Andresen with 11.5 points per game.

Keota head coach Dan Stout said they recognized Zaruba already, and will give the defense duties to Greiner.

“I think offensively they have an off-guard kid that scores about 23 points per game, and he’s a kid that you just can’t leave open. A lot of these teams we watched them play, played zone against them, and we probably are not going to do a lot of that, we will probably stick to our man-to-man defense’s so that we keep someone on him at all times, because he is a kid that if you leave him open for a split second he is going to shoot the ball, and he’ll shoot the ball three or four feet behind the three-point line,” Stout said. “So we have already recognized that we have to have someone on him at all times, no matter who is in the game.”

Tune in to AM and FM KCII and KCIIradio.com under radio plus to hear all of the action live from Wells Fargo arena, with pregame at 10, and tip-off at 10:30. The one to count on for today’s local sports coverage is AM and FM KCII and KCIIradio.com.