By the time fourth-seeded Maize and fifth-seeded Leavenworth were done electrifying the crowd late into the night on Thursday at William L. White Auditorium during their first-round game at the 6A boys’ basketball state tournament, it was a wonder that the 69-year-old arena hadn’t crumbled to the ground.
In a knock-down, drag-out, cage-fight of a basketball game, it was Leavenworth who emerged from the octagon victorious despite the fact that they trailed most of the game. They fought the uphill battle but were able to keep it within five points the entire way and keep the partisans on both sides yelling back and forth across the gym, and when it was all said and done, it was the Pioneer fans that the arena security had to keep from rushing the floor in a wave of blue after their team held on for a 51-49 victory.
The Pioneers (17-6) had only a brief, one-point lead in the first quarter before trailing until the final minutes. Down by four with 4:39 to go, Nino Williams turned a 3-point play in transition which was immediately followed by a steal in the backcourt from Kyle Wiggins that he turned into a layup 10 seconds later to put Leavenworth up 47-46 and send the fans behind the basket into delirium.
The teams exchanged baskets on each of their following possessions, but Maize (17-6) was called for a carrying violation with 3:41 left, giving the Pioneers a chance to start melting the clock. They still led by two when Maize got the ball back with still over a minute left, and they decided to hold for the last shot. They got three chances at the basket, none of them went in, and Leavenworth punched their ticket to the state semifinal tonight (Friday).
“We were never out of it,” Pioneer head coach Larry Hogan said. “We couldn’t get a stop to take the lead or spread out any on them, and they’re a great basketball team. They followed their gameplan, they attacked us in the lane, they have good players. Our guys just never quit. … Kyle got the big steal that put us up one … and we got the ball to Nino and he went to work.”
“It was pretty intense,” Williams said. “We started off sloppy and slow because of all the adversity, and then we finally picked it up in the second half. I didn’t have a good first half, so I knew I had to pick it up in the second half in order for us to win. That’s what I trained my mind to think in the second half, I went to the boards hard, and I started knocking down shots.”
Williams scored 14 of his game-high 18 points in the second half, and he also made one of the biggest plays of the game defensively. After Maize’s first shot on their final possession was tied up on the rebound and given back to them with the possession arrow, Williams rejected a shot by Maize leading scorer Ryan Schultz and sent it out of bounds with 6.6 seconds remaining.
“We can’t let them score, that’s the only thing that was going through my mind,” Williams said.
The Eagles had one last chance, and the ball found it’s way into Schultz’s hands again. His pull-up jumper to tie the game missed, however, and Leavenworth’s Sam Banach tipped the rebound out to the perimeter as time expired.
“We just had to D up,” sophomore Grant Greenberg said. “We couldn’t let them have any second-chance shots, because I knew they were going to go inside. We just had to box out.”
It was Greenberg who carried the offensive load early, as the Eagle defense was collapsing hard on Williams, limiting him to only 2-of-7 shooting in the first half, and he picked up his second foul with 1:55 left in the half when he tried to rebound a missed free throw. Greenberg was a perfect 6-for-6 from the field in the first half, scoring 14 points.
“He got open looks and he made them pay,” Hogan said. “And he took the ball to the rim, which he does well.”
“I just knew I had to make shots because you know they’re going to double-team Nino…” Greenberg said. “I was just hitting them. I was feeling it.”
The two teams had traded blows like a pair of heavyweight fighters in the early-going, exchanging scores on virtually every possession. Maize finally began to be the ones making all the noise after five minutes had elapsed, taking the largest lead of the first quarter at 17-12.
The Pioneers drew within one on a jumper by Wiggins with 0:35 left in the second quarter, and a missed 3-pointer at the buzzer by Maize’s Blake Sturgeon that clung to the rim and fell off kept the score at 33-32. Williams broke loose and drilled a trifecta 57 seconds into the third quarter to put the Pioneers on top, and Hogan said he was able to be more effective after Maize switched up defensive looks in the second half.
“He was telling me it was a matchup zone (in the first half),” Hogan said. “I said, ‘Nino it’s not really a matchup, they just know where you’re at. Everybody. You run a cut, somebody’s leading you in and checking you off to somebody else. You’re the only one they’re doing that to.’ … They played a little more man-to-man (in the second half), so we were able to go him. … He’s just a tough player. … He kept working.”
The lead continued to change hands throughout the third. Maize took a 38-35 edge back with 5:21 left in the third on a 3-ball by Ryan McCarthy, but Wiggins answered with one of his 15 seconds later to tie it again. Maize led 42-40 heading into the fourth.
The Pioneers’ semi-final game will be at 8:15 p.m. against top-seeded Wichita Heights. Hogan said his team will have to rebound better to pull off the upset, as they were outrebounded 33-19 by Maize.
“It’ll have to be better tomorrow night,” Hogan said after the game. “We’ll have to be better on the boards.”
A win will put Leavenworth in Saturday’s championship against either sixth-seeded Blue Valley North or seventh-seeded Blue Valley Northwest. Those two will play at 4:45 p.m. on Friday.
Other first-round games:
Top-seeded Wichita Heights routs Manhattan
Eighth-seeded Manhattan drew first blood on Thursday night, but then they had it spilled over them in a 56-41 loss to top-seeded Wichita Heights.
The Indians (12-11) jumped to a 5-0 lead right away, but Heights (21-2) had the lead by the end of the first quarter and never trailed again. They took a 12-10 lead with 1:02 left on a layup by Dreamius Smith, and they led for good after Terrance Moore came up with a steal and drove it down to beat the first-quarter buzzer and make it 14-12.
Primarily in a 2-3 zone, Manhattan kept the ball away from Falcons’ blue-chip Division-I prospect Perry Ellis for most of the first half. Ellis, a 6-foot-8 sophomore who came in averaging 22.5 points and 10.6 rebounds per game, only shot twice in the first half and scored four points. He finished with 17 points and seven rebounds, though, helping the Falcons outrebound Manhattan 31-18. The Indians only attempted three free throws on the night. They were led in scoring by 13 from Zach Nelson.
Blue Valley North holds off SM South in OT
Shawnee Mission South point guard Will Spradling — a future K-State teammate of Nino Williams — scored 34 points on Thursday, but none were in overtime, and sixth-seeded Blue Valley North became the second lower seed of the day to win by holding off the third-seeded Raiders 62-59.
Spradling took over the game with 21 second-half points, and he hit a pair of free throws to give SMS (17-6) a 43-33 lead with 6:16 left in regulation after it’d been tied at half. BVN (16-7) snatched the momentum back with consecutive old-fashioned 3-point plays, and a 3-pointer by Weston Ehlers cut the lead to 43-42 with 4:16 left. Spradling, who passed former KU player Greg Gurley for second on SMS’s all-time scoring list a few weeks ago, answered with a cold-blooded pull-up 3-pointer on the next possession, but the Raiders threw the ball away with one minute left protecting a 49-47 lead to give BVN a chance.
Sean McLerran, who led BVN with 21 points, tied it on a turnaround with 0:49 left, and although Spradling took it to the basket to untie it 13 seconds later, he didn’t score again. McLerran had a 3-pointer go in and out with 0:17 left, but he redeemed himself after SMS missed the front end of a one-and-one and got the rebound, was fouled, and made both free throws. BVN kept the ball out of Spradling’s hands at the end of regulation, and Rayner Fredrick missed a hook shot at the buzzer.
McLerran hit a 3-pointer for the first points of OT, and BVN led the rest of the way, although SMS’s Alex Moyer nearly tied it at the horn when he hit the rim with a 55-foot heave.
BVN jumped out to a 15-6 lead in the first 4:30 of the game with 11 points from Ehlers. No Mustang besides he and McLerran scored until there was 4:16 left in the second quarter. SMS came back and sent their crowd into a frenzy when back-to-back alley-oops to Brandon Stacker gave them a 20-18 lead with five minutes left in the first half.
Blue Valley Northwest upends Dodge City
Seventh-seeded Blue Valley Northwest used six first-half 3-pointers to stake themselves a 33-18 halftime lead, and they held on to knock off second-seeded Dodge City in the first game of the day at White Auditorium on Thursday afternoon 69-49.
Tyler Brashears scored 13 first-half points on 3-of-4 shooting from beyond the arc to help the Huskies (16-7) surge ahead. Beshears finished the game with 19 points and four 3-pointers in six attempts, and Brett Fisher finished with 23 points to lead all scorers and went 3-for-5 from downtown. BVNW went 9-for-19 (47 percent) from the perimeter as a team. They hit two quick trifectas to start the game leading 6-0 and never trailed.
Dodge City (19-4) cut the lead to one late in the first quarter before BVNW pulled away and led by as many as 18 in the second quarter. The Red Demons got back in the game with a 10-0 run at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half to make it 33-25, but the Huskies proved too strong. They outrebounded DC 32-26 and shot 22-for-28 (79 percent) from the free-throw line. Rico Hogan led DC with 19 points and five 3-pointers, but the rest of the team shot just 31 percent from the field.
