ROYAL CITY - The Royal High School boys came as close as they could, but their bid for the district tournament fell one point short last Saturday.

The league-leading Kiona-Benton Bears scored a free throw with nine seconds left to prevail, 49-48. Royal had owned the lead, 19-9, after one quarter.

"What a roller coaster of a season," said coach Pete Christensen of the campaign that refused to come together. "We had many close games. Some went our way and others weren't so pleasant."

"If I'd been asked at the beginning of the year what I thought our record would be, I would have flipped the numbers around. We ended up 7-12, but these guys are much closer to 12-7."

"Last night's game was a great example of the guts and character this team has," Christensen added. "They played with high intensity for the entire 32 minutes."

The Knights split the week's action.

They topped Warden, 50-37, on Friday before squaring off with Ki-Be.

It was a tough week for the usually high-scoring Kent Christensen. Both defenses clamped down on the 6-3 senior to keep him well under his season average.

The good news was that 6-4 Reed Lefler stepped up with the best back-to-back efforts of his career. He scored 20 points against Warden and 22 against Ki-Be.

Christensen asked a lot of playing time from his seniors.

He didn't have a large cast of juniors, so he needed big minutes from a few of the sophomores.

"I am going to miss this group of seniors," he said. "Most of them have been on the varsity roster since their sophomore year. They have a love of the game and worked hard to improve. I wish them well in their future plans."