Saints notch biggest win over L-M
A few dozen Xavier High School students spilled onto the court and celebrated a 64-48 victory over the Linn-Mar Lions Friday night, but those happy students did not know the entire story.
As it turns out, the 16-point victory over Linn-Mar is the biggest for the Xavier boys basketball program in the 36-game history between the two Metro schools.
The Saints topped the Lions by 10 points two years ago, but otherwise Linn-Mar has dominated the series since they began playing in the 1998-99 campaign when Xavier High School opened for business.
Linn-Mar won the first 29 meetings, many of them by lopsided margins, but the Saints have a 4-4 record against the Lions in the past four seasons and are fighting back.
All told, Linn-Mar leads the series 32-4.
Linn-Mar is experiencing a rare "down" year for boys basketball with a 7-11 overall record, but they still have talented players and have posted some good victories this season.
Xavier Coach Ryan Luehrsmann was happy with his club's performance on Hall of Fame Night at Ron Thillen Gymnasium.
"I thought we were very good in stretches," he said. "We shared the ball very well on the offensive end and for the most part were decent on defense.