HS Basketball: Beast Up Invitational hosted by Grand Oaks - Day 3

THE WOODLANDS, TX –- For the first time in school history, Grand Oaks hosted a Basketball Tournament for local teams and teams around the area. The Beast Up Invitational kicked off with games being played every hour and a half starting at 8:30 am and going all the way in the night to 7:00 pm. Each team was to play 4 total games with a 5th being a championship game on the final day of the Invitational. Being a host for the first time can be nerve racking but it seemed like all the boxes were checked for Grand Oaks and all the volunteers that helped put on the games throughout the day went above and beyond to make each team fell at home.

Grand Oaks Boys Basketball Head Coach said, “Hopefully we are putting on a first-class event, and that’s what we’re trying to do to get more people to want to come back to our tournaments.” He continued, “We want to make it one of the premier events in the area. So’ I hope we at least accomplished that.”

Host, Grand Oaks, was in the finals for the silver bracket championship against the strong Klein Collins boys basketball team. Both came into the game with 1 loss from day one and overall, 3 wins against other strong teams in the tournament. For the entire tournament Grand Oaks has started off slow, kind of like they needed to warm up and feel out the other team they were playing. But in this game Klein Collins jumped on their behavior, pushed the momentum to make plays and get early points on the board. Grand Oaks quickly found themselves down by 5 in the first but the struggled once again the get the ball in the basket. Klein Collins also pressed the momentum creating turnovers and getting some easy uncontested layups. By the half Grand Oaks had a hill to climb as Klein Collins grew their lead to 15 making the score 35-20.

In the first half Grand Oaks did not look like a team that would be in the finals. Klein Collins jumped on the fact that the team was playing a slower game but, in the 3rd, Grand Oaks hit a spark and started to make a comeback. With a quick couple of 3 pointers, the score kept getting closer and closer on each possession. Now Grand Oaks was putting the pressure on Klein Collins creating turnovers in their favor. Grand Oaks was able to bring the score within 7 by the end of the 3rd and going into the 4th and final quarter of their tournament. Once again both teams came out aggressive with Klein Collins posting up some monster 3-pointers giving them the distance they needed to hold off the attacks from Grand Oaks. While Grand Oaks possessed the ball more than Klein Collins, they didn’t have as many shots on goal. This final Silver Bracket game had an unfortunate but exciting end as Grand Oaks tried to make the comeback. Final score being Grand Oaks 63, Klein Collins 69 making Klein Collins the Silver Bracket Champions in the 1st Beast Up Invitational.

“It’s not the results we expected and we wanted to do better but, we dropped a tough one on the Klein Oak team and dropped one today on a real good Klein Collins team.” Said Head Coach Mike Day of the Grand Oaks Grizzlies as he reflected on the final game.

When asked if this was going to be an every year thing, Coach Mike Day smiled and said, “I don’t know right now, we will have to see. We will just have to assess how this one went and go from there. We would like to have one every year but we will just have to see how this one went.”

Final
1st Place Gold – Bryan Vikings
2nd Place Gold – Tomball Memorial
3rd Place Gold – Kingwood Park

1st Place Silver – Klein Collins
2nd Place Silver – Grand Oaks
3rd Place Silver – Montgomery

1st Place Bronze – Aldine Davis
2nd Place Bronze - Cleveland