DUBLIN — West Bladen successfully denied East Bladen’s last play.
The Eagles won anyway.
Senior Greyson Heustess scored before the buzzer, ending the Eagles’ 10-game losing streak with a 57-56 high school boys basketball triumph before a jam-packed 1,500-plus at the Castle on Friday night. The Knights had won two meetings earlier this year between the teams that brought a combined skid of 19 games into the season finale.
“I didn’t know I was getting it,” Huestess said. “We were going to pass it in to Keshaun, and he’d go as far as he could or hit Darrell or Freddy on the wings. Their defense changed it.”
West Bladen junior Tyre Boykin had made the second of two foul shots with 7.8 seconds left. There was no secret between coaches Kenzil McCall and Travis Pait; McCall’s first option would be his senior point guard, Keshaun Davis. Senior Darrell Banks and sophomore Freddy Wooten would be stationed on the wings.
Boykin denied Davis the entry pass from Heustess inbounding. So Banks, knowing he was a wing option, gave Huestess a quizzical look and the ball back and hustled down for position.
Heustess, a prolific goal scorer in soccer, did what came natural. He hurried toward the goal, dodged a defender at the top of the key and got airborne against the close guard of another.
His shot kissed off the glass into the net. Bedlam ensued in front of a team bench that has known nothing but misery since winning Jan. 8 against South Robeson.
At the end of that long six weeks, East Bladen had rallied from nine points down with under three minutes to play.
“Coach told us to not give up, to fight to the last whistle,” Heustess said.
McCall was elated. East Bladen had lost each of its last two games by a point, two others in the skid by three or less and seven this season by seven or less.
“If we just won half of them we’d be playing next week,” he said. “It makes me feel good, that they stayed with me till the end. It says a lot about their character.”
The Eagles, nor the Knights, are playing in the Three Rivers Conference tournament. The 10-team league decided in January that only the top eight would play; last year, places seven through 10 played on the Saturday night after the regular season ended to determine the last two spots of the quarterfinal pairings.
Boykin, being recruited for football by Mack Brown’s staff at North Carolina, scored 15 of his 19 points after halftime. He got seven straight bridging the final two periods, taking his team in front 43-39. His bucket with 3:06 to go made it 53-44.
Then the wheels wobbled.
“We had some turnovers, it kind of blurs at the end,” Pait said of the last three minutes. “We had some poor decisions on shot selection.
“They made plays down the stretch, we didn’t. It’s been that kind of year.”
Boykin uncharacteristically never made a 3-pointer. Senior Keshawn Lewis added 11 points and sophomore Shy’ron Adams hit a pair of fourth-quarter 3-pointers on the way to 11 points.
Banks finished with 16 points for the Eagles. Davis scored 12 and Wooten had 11. Heustess scored five of his nine points in the final period.
East Bladen finished the season 4-20, with a 4-14 mark in the Three Rivers for ninth place. West Bladen finished 5-19, 2-16 in the league with a 10-game losing streak.
West Bladen’s Tyre Boykin puts in an offensive rebound surrounded by teammates (from left) Jaheim Lesane, Drew Harris and Keshawn Lewis, and East Bladen’s (from left) Freddy Wooten, Javant McDowell and Keshaun Davis.
East Bladen’s Javant McDowell grabs a rebound in Friday night’s 57-56 victory over West Bladen.
East Bladen’s Javant McDowell gets a shot away against the guard of West Bladen’s Drew Harris (24).