Leavenworth junior Kyle Wiggins emerged from the locker room as a man on a mission at the start of Saturday afternoon’s third-place game at the Kansas 6A state basketball tournament, hitting four 3-pointers and scoring 14 points in the first quarter, but Blue Valley North’s Weston Ehlers provided the answer against the fifth-seeded Pioneers with 26 points and a game-winning 3-pointer with 4.3 seconds remaining to lift the sixth-seeded Mustangs to a 60-57 win.
Wiggins finished with 21 points and made 3-pointers on three consecutive possessions early in the first period. Ehlers was the next man to score after each one of them, however, and two of those buckets were from behind the arc to keep the Mustangs (17-8) close. They trailed by only five heading into the second quarter despite scoring the same number of points as a team as Wiggins did individually.
Competing in his final high school game before playing at Kansas State, senior Nino Williams committed his second foul just three minutes, 42 seconds into the game however, and he didn’t get back in the game until the second half. North got 3-pointers on consecutive possessions by Danny Dolan and Sean McLerran to take the lead early in the second quarter, and McLerran hit another with 4:55 left in the half to make it a 9-0 run and a 23-19 Mustang lead.
Wiggins, who also led the Pioneers (17-8) with four assists, found Tony Dougherty for a layup to tie the score 25-25 with 1:18 left in the first half, though, and Dougherty scored again on a putback 28 seconds later to put them back in front. Wiggins again stepped up at the end of the half, pulling up for his fifth 3-pointer at the buzzer to send Leavenworth to the intermission with a 30-28 lead.
North started the second half strong and broke a 32-32 tie with five straight points from Ehlers, but the blue and white were able to pull even again by the end of the third quarter. Alec Zeck stopped the Mustang run with a 3-pointer, and Preston Padgett made a juggling catch on a pass in transition and was able to throw the ball back behind his head for a reverse layup to tie it at 41-41 with 37 seconds remaining in the period.
Padgett continued to be clutch in the fourth, scoring the first points of the period with a bank shot and giving Leavenworth the lead again with a 3-pointer to make it 46-43 with seven minutes left. The Mustangs had the lead back at the midway point of the fourth, but Williams returned to have a huge impact late in the game. He blocked a Mustang shot against the glass and hit a drop-step layup 12 seconds later to put Leavenworth up 51-50 with 3:48 to go, and he made another layup 35 seconds after that to make it a three-point margin.
