Why share a conference title when you can hog it all for yourselves? The Washington boys chose the latter on Friday when they clinched the outright 2021-22 Southeast Conference basketball crown with a 59-36 home victory over Keokuk (4-15, 0-10). 

As heard on KCII, the three time defending champs made it apparent early on they weren’t looking for drama in the conference finale by racing out to a 20-10 first quarter advantage and it ballooning to 35-15 at the break. The game never got closer than 19 again in the second half with the whole Washington bench getting in on the fun. Only one player was in double figures, but 10 Demons found the score column including six with at least five points. Lance Sobaski led the way with 11 while Travis Leyden, Ethan Patterson, and Kasen Bailey finished with eight. Washington held Keokuk’s leading scorer MJ Davis to just four points on the night.

Head Coach Collin Stark tells KCII Sports his boys were hungry. “Last year we shared the title and our boys didn’t want to do that this time. They have put in a lot of time and effort to get to this point. I think we are a better team now than when we played them in January. We had some shots not fall tonight, but I was happy with how we played defensively and we battled all the way through.”

The Demons conclude the conference slate 9-1 and improve to 17-3 overall. They have one more regular season contest Thursday hosting Solon. The class 3A substate pairings were released this week with Washington appointed as the one seed and they will host eight seed South Tama (1-20) in the first round of substate on Monday, February 21st.