Same story, only four days later and without the extra 12 minutes of basketball — once again, Northern Heights just couldn’t get the job done in a hard-fought game against Lyndon.
Third-seeded Heights missed its opportunities in the final minutes of its opening game in the Flint Hills Shootout and missed a chance to avenge Friday’s three-overtime loss to the sixth-seeded Tigers, falling into the consolation bracket with Tuesday’s 62-58 defeat.
“We were down two, or down four, and turned the ball over instead of getting a shot,” Northern Heights coach Lanny Massey said. “And those are times when we have to settle down. We try to speed up and play faster, and we have to slow down and execute a little better instead of trying to outrun somebody to the basket...”
A long scoring drought that included the first five minutes of the fourth quarter helped declaw the Wildcats. Still, they were in it all the way to the final minute, as Lyndon itself took almost four minutes of fourth-quarter time to score before a Shea Kirsop layin gave the Tigers a 50-47 lead. Kirsop then drove the lane and drew a foul on Kenneth Bronson — Bronson’s fifth — with 3:23 left to play. Foul trouble had kept the steady Bronson on the bench for much of the game, and now the Wildcats wouldn’t have him for crunch time.
“It hurt quite a bit not having Kenny there to kind of stabilize a few things,” Massey said. “Kenny brings that calm to the storm, and him sitting on the bench and not being able to help us really hurt. I appreciate everything he does for us.”
Kirsop’s two free throws gave Lyndon a five-point advantage before Teeino Tabares dribbled on the right wing and spotted Nick Tabares wide open on the left block. Nick caught Teeino’s bullet pass, laid the ball in and was fouled with three minutes to go. He made the free throw to bring Heights to within 52-50.
Two free throws by Roman Murray brought the Wildcats to within one at 53-52 with 1:24 to play. Lyndon answered by busting Heights’ halfcourt trap, with Curtis Wendling finding Derek Banzhaf underneath for an easy layup to push the lead back to three. Heights called timeout with exactly one minute left to go. Out of the TO, Nathan Campbell got an open 3-point look from the left corner, but his line-drive shot missed, and Dylan Filburn grabbed the rebound and drew a foul from Murray with 50.6 to go. Two Filburn free throws later, it was a five-point game, and Murray airballed on a 3-pointer from the top of the key, sending the ball out of bounds to Lyndon. Banzhaf made 1-of-2 free throws to push the Tiger lead to six, then stole a pass on the left side and got fouled again with 14.4 seconds left. He hit both free throws to make it 60-52, effectively rendering obsolete two deep threes Murray then hit in the last 10 seconds.
Murray finished with five 3-pointers in 11 tries and a team-high 19 points. Nick Tabares had 12 points. Banzhaf led all scorers with 20 points for the Tigers, who got to the line 27 times to Heights’ seven. Lyndon made 15 of its free throw tries.
Heights had a 33-30 lead at half after withstanding an early Lyndon run. But the Wildcats’ last lead came after Murray’s three from just left of the top of the key late in the third quarter made it 47-46.
“Getting defensive stops and executing on offense. That’s what the whole game’s about,” Murray said, “and we just didn’t do that at the end.”
Murray didn’t feel like the Tigers have the Wildcats’ number after two tight wins by the Tigers in the last four days. His coach had a slightly different feeling.
“They have our number, I would say, just a little bit,” Massey said. “But it’s one of those things maybe I should’ve started fouling just a little bit earlier, because obviously we knocked down several really long threes to give ourselves an opportunity, and (it’s) just one of those things that I kind of felt like we ran out of time.
“But I have feeling that, with us and them, it could go on for days. It’d just go back and forth if you kept extending the time, that no one’s gonna get away from each other too far.”
Lyndon will take on second-seeded Council Grove in Friday’s semifinal action beginning at 8:15 p.m. Heights will take on Herington in the consolation bracket at 4:45 p.m.
Lyndon 62, Northern Heights 58
Lyndon 20 10 18 14 — 62
Northern Heights 16 17 14 11 — 58
Lyndon — Banzhaf 7-15 4-7 20, Kirsop 3-5 3-4 11, Filburn 3-5 3-4 11, Wendling 3-5 1-5 8, Brown 4-7 2-5 10, Spencer 1-2 1-2 4, Patterson 0-0 0-0 0, Wilson 0-1 0-0 0, Vande Velde 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 20-36 15-27 62.
Northern Heights — Bronson 3-7 0-0 7, T. Tabares 2-5 2-2 6, Swanson 4-4 0-0 8, N. Tabares 5-12 1-1 12, Murray 6-13 2-2 19, D. Swanson 0-2 0-2 0, Arndt 1-1 0-0 2, Heins 1-2 0-0 2, Campbell 1-3 0-0 2. Totals 23-49 5-7 58.
3-point goals — Lyndon 7-11 (Banzhaf 2-4, Kirsop 2-2, Filburn 1-1, Wendling 1-2, Spencer 1-1), Northern Heights 7-25 (Murray 5-11, N. Tabares 1-6, Bronson 1-4, T. Tabares 0-2, Campbell 0-2). Total fouls — Lyndon 15, Northern Heights 21. Fouled out — Kirsop, Bronson, Murray.