By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Their 11-point lead had dwindled to nothing, they had turned it over on back-to-back possessions and a raucous home crowd was on its feet for a tie game in the final minute of regulation.
It was no matter for the Southwest boys basketball team, though. The visiting Trojans scored on each of their final three possessions and relied on some key defensive stops to emerge with a 68-66 victory against Lamar on Saturday in the Class 3 District 12 championship.
“It’s hard for words to be able to describe it,” said Southwest coach Rusty Roe. “I’m very proud of the guys. At the end Lamar kind of got us on the ropes a little bit and I think we started playing just to not lose rather than continuing to play to win. The coach part of you says I wish we would have kept playing to win, but the other part says until you’ve been there and experienced it, sometimes you don’t know exactly what that’s like and this is a new team. I’m proud of them for the way we got through it.”
The top-seeded Trojans won for the 10th time in 11 games and improved to 22-6 after winning their second straight district title. They’ll meet Greenwood on Tuesday in the sectional round.
But they needed some late heroics to advance on Saturday against the second seed Tigers, who finished 15-13. After a back-and-forth first half that saw seven lead changes, Southwest seemed to have settled in by halftime with an eight-point lead, and it was a 43-32 game in the first minute of the second half. The Trojans still led by eight at the end of three, but Lamar kept whittling away.
A 3-pointer by Alex Wilkerson brought the Tigers to within four, and another triple from Luke Tabakian cut the lead to 55-52 with 4:48 remaining. The visitors pushed it back to six and then Wilkerson grabbed an offensive rebound and scored to make it 61-57, and then Ian Ngugi scored on a layup to make the score 61-59 with two minutes on the clock.
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A three-point-play by Southwest’s Jesse Holder gave his team some breathing room, but Wilkerson was right back at it–he cut it to three with 1:37 on the clock, and then after a pair of Southwest turnovers, he scored and was fouled with 50 seconds left to play and his free throw tied it at 64.
Southwest’s Tyler Meek scored the go-ahead basket with 38 seconds on the clock. After a Lamar miss, Brendyn Paulsen made one of two free throws for a 67-64 lead. Then Ngugi scored on a layup with 10 seconds left to get Lamar back within a point. Meek was fouled with 6.6 seconds left to go and made the second free throw for the final score.
Then the Trojans had to rely on their defense.
Ngugi drove in for the tying layup but his shot was swatted out of bounds by Paulsen with 2.3 seconds remaining. Ngugi inbounded the ball to Wilkerson, who kicked it back to Ngugi and the senior’s 3-pointer at the buzzer wouldn’t fall.
“It helps to have a kid who’s 6-5 and can time things inside,” Roe said of the block. “It makes you look smart as a coach when he can make those plays.”
Lamar coach Heath Heckadon, when he emerged from the locker room afterwards, grabbed the scorer’s book and tallied up the free throws: the Tigers made 6 of 12, and the Trojans 12 of 17. Southwest, in fact, made 8 of 12 in the second half alone, while Lamar struggled at the line late, making just 3 of 9 in the final two quarters.
“Pretty big difference in the ballgame right there,” he said.
“The kids talked about going for the win and I drew something up for Ian to get the last shot, he’s our best player and I wanted him to get the shot,” he said of the end. “He wanted that and you’ve got to give him the opportunity to do that. We forced the ball a little bit tonight, didn’t have some great shots but our kids are never going to quit, they’re fighters and they’re great kids. I can’t say enough about what they do.”
It was a balanced scoring effort for Southwest, which was led by 21 points from Holder. He was a perfect 6 for 6 at the free throw line. Paulsen added 15 points, Kenneth Pippin scored 14, Meek and Brady Brinkman each scored eighth and Caleb Ayer added two.
“I think the big difference between this game and the last we played was the way we moved the ball and the way we moved without the ball on offense,” Roe said. “The first game (a 52-48 win vs Pierce City on Thursday) we tried to really make things happen and wanted to do well but we’re best as an individual when we work collectively and most teams are. We worked collectively on the offensive end and the guys bought in 100 percent to what we needed to do on defense. When you’ve got a team that’s focused and trying to carry out the plan, that’s all you can ask for as a coach.”
Lamar was led by Ngugi’s 26 points; he scored 15 in the first half. Wilkerson scored 15, including 10 in the fourth quarter, and Talon Timmons added 13 and scored nine of those in the first eight minutes. Eli Ngugi added five points, Tabakian had three and Trey Pittsenbarger and Chase Querry each scored two.
