BLADENBORO — So close.
The final night for Tyre Boykin to play in the home gym the Knights call their Castle was nearly the magical kingdom of he and his teammates Wednesday night.
The senior guard scored 29 points and led his boys high school basketball team within a whisker of an upset before falling to now first place St. Pauls 51-49. The Knights made only a free throw in the final 2:53, undone in the first three minutes of the fourth period by four turnovers that wiped out a seven-point lead, and by the Bulldogs scoring the final five points over the last 85 seconds.
“Once in a lifetime feeling,” Boykin said of his Senior Night. “I’ll never get to play in the Castle in front of these fans again, so I tried to make the most of it.”
He was dominant offensively, pivotal defensively in an unconventionally played 3-2 zone. St. Pauls tried its best defender on him, gave some help with a second and sometimes third player, and looked to prevent him from tearing loose in the open court.
At times it worked, others it didn’t.
The Knights rallied from an early deficit to pull within a point at halftime, then spent a majority of the second half leading after wiping out a 30-24 deficit. Boykin’s 3-pointer with 3:49 left in the third tied it at 31, and buckets by junior Shy’ron Adams and freshman Gary Parker sent the hosts ahead 35-31 for the final eight minutes.
Boykin’s three-point play pushed the advantage to 38-31. Senior Xayvon Davis, a 6-foot-9 first-year player, made a rebound slam dunk of his missed free throw midway the period and Parker got the team’s last field goal with 2:53 to go for a 48-45 edge.
Boykin’s free throw with 1:25 to play was their last point. A final play in the last 10 seconds ended with a missed jumper at the elbow, and a putback attempt that was long.
“He’s just amazing,” Davis said of Boykin. “A great player, great teammate. He just motivates us all to do better. It’s been awesome.”
He called the rebound slam among the highlights of his year, rivaled only by a night with nine blocks.
“I didn’t mean to miss it, but coach told me to step back a step, so I was like, I had enough time to get some momentum up, and I missed it so I might as well go ahead and dunk it,” Davis said.
The crowd was elated.
“I knew we could do it,” Boykin said of not only throwing a scare into the league leader but nearly pulling off the upset. “I knew we had it in us. We just had to come out and compete.”
Pait said the fourth quarter was a bit of a microcosm of the season.
“Too many turnovers, and we’ve got to learn how to handle the press,” Boykin said in agreement. “But other than that, a pretty good game.”
Adams had seven points and Parker six for West Bladen. In addition to Boykin and Davis, it was the final home game also for Nolan Bryant, Tra’shawn Ballard, T.J. Smith and Nijeah McKoy.
The Knights carry a 1-14 Three Rivers Conference mark and 5-17 overall ledger into Friday’s showdown with East Bladen. The teams are playing for eighth place and a spot in the league tournament.
St. Pauls won its fourth straight, moving to 12-3 in the league and 18-5 overall. Emonta Smith led the victors with 16 points and Caleb Henderson added 11.
In his final game at the Castle, senior Tyre Boykin scored 29 for West Bladen in a 51-49 loss to St. Pauls.
West Bladen seniors Nijeah McKoy and Tyre Boykin defend St. Pauls’ Erikson Emanuel on Wednesday night.
West Bladen’s Nolan Bryant (33) and Tyre Boykin (5) grapple with St. Pauls for a rebound on Wednesday night.
Tyre Boykin fell to the floor after making a shot and getting fouled on a sequence that would become a three-point play in the second half Wednesday night. He scored 29 points in his final game at the Castle, nearly leading West Bladen to an upset of first place St. Pauls.