In a rare uncrowded pocket amongst a sea of green Saturday night, amid a steady buzz of conversation, Gabe Awbrey embraced Benji George.

The senior guard-head coach combo, enveloped on all sides by fans clad in viridescent shirts, pants and socks, exchanged words of sobering nature, for a reason neither would have preferred: George’s Manhattan High boys basketball team’s season had just ended moments prior.

The duo share many memories, dating back to Awbrey’s freshman year, but Saturday night will remain a landmark, because the Indians’ season came to a screeching halt at the MHS north gym with a 71-61 sub-state final loss to Wichita East.

A landmark, that is, because the loss capped a season Awbrey said he will struggle to forget.

“It’s been a great four years. I couldn’t have asked for a better program to be a part of,” Awbrey, who totaled 13 points in the loss, said. “We’ve had a great relationship. I’ll miss playing for [George] a lot.”

Awbrey, though, was just one of seven seniors to line the season’s roster, a band of players whose time with the program has been laid to rest, but one whose tradition George said will endure.

“When they look back on it, they’re going to carry a lot of legacy with them, because they have done things that haven’t been done before in the program,” George said. “They’ve represented our school and our community with the utmost in terms of pride and class, and that’s more important than any score on any scoreboard.”

The scoreboard, however, was what led to the Indians’ demise. And it shared no sympathy.

That, in large part, can be attributed to the Aces’ formidable, towering presence in forward Xavier Kelly, a 6-4, 260-pound center who totaled 20 points Saturday night.

Six arrived in the first quarter, a frame that saw East connect on each of its first 10 shots.

“You tell your guys two straight days in film, and walking through and everything, that this guy’s not a shooter, and this guy’s not a shooter, and then they come out and everybody’s unconscious from everywhere on the court,” George said. “And then when they have somebody in the middle like Kelly, the solutions are few and far between.”

The white-hot Aces hit four triples in the first frame alone, good enough for a 24-17 lead on the threshold of the second stanza. By then, though, the Indians found themselves looking upward from a hole, and senior forward Grant Munsen, who spent much of the night defending Kelly, said the early deficit set the tone for the remainder of the contest.

“We’ve been down before, but I don’t think by that much,” Munsen said. “So we knew we had to really fight.”

Manhattan did indeed fight, so much so that it tied the game in the fourth quarter, but before that, the situation looked grim for the home team.

That’s because Wichita East built up a 10-point lead in the second quarter, one that could have been sliced to less if not for the Indians’ inefficiency at the free throw line: MHS converted on just 8-of-16 attempts in the first half.

It was a statistic that George said marred his team in more ways than one, as East failed to make a three in the second frame and Kelly posted just three points in the quarter.

“We can point to their red-hot shooting too, but the fact of the matter was we missed a lot of free throws early,” he said. “Two or three of them were front ends of one-and-ones, and we know those are like turnovers.”

The MHS deficit was eight at halftime, at 35-27. It stayed at eight after the third as well, but the third period is when Manhattan began to stage a comeback that — nearly — saved its season.

The Indians threaded four triples in the third, and two came off the hands of junior guard Tommy Ekart. Senior Robbie Ostermann logged the quarter’s final triple, a bomb that sent the gym into hysteria.

The three points brought Manhattan to within eight to begin the fourth, but the mayhem was only beginning. Because the long-ball onslaught was not over.

Ostermann canned yet another triple on Manhattan’s first possession of the fourth, and after Kelly missed two free throws on the other end, Awbrey knocked down another three.

One possession later, and the game was knotted at 52 when Munsen converted on a baseline floater. The north gym shook with pandemonium.

“We played a lot harder on defense,” Munsen said of his team’s comeback bid. “Started boxing out more; going after rebounds.”

As it happened, though, rebounding served as the Indians’ Achilles heel Saturday night. And a lot of it had to do with Kelly’s monstrous presence under the basket.

“We couldn’t get a rebound to save our season, really,” George said.

Junior Cade Roberts used up Manhattan’s last gasp at a rally when he converted on an and-one opportunity, bringing the Indians back within four, at 63-59, with just under two minutes to play.

From there, though, the Aces ripped off five straight points to slam the door shut on the game — and on Manhattan’s season.

So Wichita East will advance to the 6A state tournament in Wichita where it won the tournament a season ago, while Manhattan’s season, at 18-4 overall, sputtered out on its home floor. But Roberts, even as a junior with another year to look forward to, said the loss was far from easy to stomach.

“It was tough [in the locker room after the game],” Roberts said. “Looking at all the seniors, seeing tears in their eyes, and hearing our coaches with cracking voices and everything. It’s definitely an experience no one wants to go through.”

But it is one Manhattan will have to go through. But George said after the tears have faded, his team will appreciate their accomplishments and the numerous records they broke as the season wore on.

“It’s hard to tell them that right now, because they’re as hurt as a group of kids could possibly be,” he said. “But when we get some time to look back, I couldn’t be any more proud of a group of kids. This doesn’t change that.”

Roberts felt the same way.

“We fought our asses off to stay with it,” he said. “And I’m proud.”