It took hard-nosed defense and relentless effort for all 32 minutes on Saturday night, but the North Greene boys escaped South Greene with a 53-52 victory.
“We’ve been through a lot this week, finding out we lost out leader in Bennett McLain. You don’t know how your guys are going to respond to that,” North Greene coach Sam Tarlton said. “But they executed the game plan to a T, and they had some fight in them. I felt like the difference was rebounding. We knew they were big, and we knew every time a shot went up we had to hit somebody. We did it just enough to withstand their run late. Anytime you can leave here with a win you feel fortunate.”
Saturday’s fourth quarter started with the Huskies leading 41-39, but that quickly grew to 46-39 after Thomas Darnell knocked down a jumper from the right wing and Tyler Britton drained a three-pointer from the left side.
With 3:10 left Britton hit from deep again to make it 49-43, but the Rebels would not let North Greene walk out of its gym without a fight. On the trip the other way Noah Wright put back a miss, and before the ball made it back to midcourt Jase Roderick stole it. Roderick then sank a pull up jumper to close the gap to 49-47.
Trey Gentry scored three points the old-fashioned way and Roderick hit jumper from the paint to give South Greene a 52-49 lead with 1:40 left to play.
Leading 52-51 the Rebels tried to bleed the clock, but high-pressure perimeter defense forced a travel and gave North Greene a chance.
With 13 seconds remaining Lance Carrico came up with the winning bucket when he banked in a tough jump shot from the elbow with a hand in his face.
South Greene called a timeout with 4.6 seconds left to draw up its go-ahead chance, but the Huskies forced Roderick under the basket and did not allow the Rebels to get a shot off.
“You can’t pick and choose when you want to play. We got outplayed last night and we should have lost. We got outplayed tonight and we did get beat,” South Greene coach Terry Hoese said. “They played half the game without their big man and we couldn’t take advantage. The bottom line is we choked, we didn’t play how we are capable of playing and we lost.”
Defense made the difference on Saturday for the Rebels as they concentrated on doubling the Rebels three most dangerous options in Roderick, Cayden Fillers and Chandler Gamble. The three were held to 20 combined points in the contest. Roderick scored 12 of those.
“We knew that if we didn’t play with force we didn’t have a chance. South Greene is so big and physical and talented, and I was so pleased to see us match them,” Tarlton said. “We showed that we can do it, now we have to keep doing it. Jaiden Bailey is 5’7” guarding 6’8” Chandler Gamble and did it great, he only scored two points. All of them got out there and played tough. We played some junk stuff, playing two or three of them hard and two or three of them soft. We knew who we had to help on. It didn’t start great, and their other guys made some shots early, but we had to trust that those weren’t the guys that were going to beat us.”
Early in the contest North Greene’s defensive strategy left the other Rebels open from behind the arc and Lucas Couch hit twice while Gentry hit once for an 11-6 lead.
North Greene went in front 13-12 with 42 seconds left in the first period when Lawson Davenport got a floater to fall. South Greene went back in front at 14-13 the horn when Fillers banked in a jumper from the paint.
Fillers scored the first points of the second quarter, but then he and Gambled picked up their seconds fouls and spent long stretches of the game on the bench.
The Huskies took the lead with 2:18 left in the first half when Jaiden Bailey sent a pass to Davenport on the wing for a triple that made it 23-21.
Bailey then ended the half with a baseline runner that gave North Greene a 26-25 halftime lead.
North Greene’s lead stretched to 33-27 midway through the third period when Carrico hit from behind the arc.
For South Greene Gavin Dyer hit from deep and Roderick scored three the hard way before a putback bucket by Wright put the Rebels in front 39-38.
Bailey gave the lead back to North Greene before the quarter closed when he sank a trey from the corner that made it 41-39.
Carrico led all scorers on Saturday with 17 points while Lawson Davenport put in 14.
“Lawson Davenport was stud tonight, Lance played well, and Tyler Britton hit some big shots. All of our role guys did their jobs. It was a complete team effort, and I’m proud of them,” Tarlton said.
Roderick scored 12 points for the Rebels while Gentry added 11.
