The agony of defeat: Ardrey Kell’s loss reminds us of the terrible beauty of sports

Do you ever feel things — really feel them — more strongly than you do in high school?

I wondered that Saturday night as I sat in the stands and watched Ardrey Kell lose a four-point lead and a state championship in the final 17 seconds of the N.C. boys 4A basketball final, falling 67-65 in overtime to Millbrook.

In the aftermath, Ardrey Kell’s players were classy but absolutely devastated.

Some collapsed. Some cried. One sat alone in the stands, his head between his knees.

“We’re kind of shell-shocked right now,” Ardrey Kell coach Mike Craft said a few minutes later.

“Just heartbreaking personally,” said Ardrey Kell senior guard Knoah Carver, who had played a gorgeous game until those final 17 seconds. “I had a costly turnover that could have changed the game. Yes, like (coach) said, kind of shell-shocked. I’m still stuck in the moment.”

In a haunting sequence, Ardrey Kell missed its last four free throws of the game, including two foul-line misses by Carver with 14 seconds left.

Even then, the game was only tied at 65-all after Millbrook’s Silas Demary hit two free throws with 10.4 seconds to go. Ardrey Kell had the ball, seemingly in position for a game-winning final shot to win the school’s first statee championship. Or, at worst, double overtime.

But Carver — who had 21 points, 5 three-pointers and zero turnovers until that moment — looked for a teammate downcourt and attempted to throw a pass from his hip while being double-teamed. Demary instead stripped the ball from him.

As Carver’s momentum took him to the floor, Demary took the ball in for an uncontested layup with 4.0 seconds to go.

Millbrook’s fans and bench went wild. It was a prep basketball version of an NFL pick-6 — startling and deadly.

An eight-footer by Ardrey Kell’s Evan Smith to possibly send the game into double OT then bounced off the back rim and out at the buzzer. And Millbrook — which won its final three games of the 4A playoffs in overtime — had suddenly earned the championship.

“I thought we had ‘em,” Craft said. “We had ‘em, but we let ‘em slip.”

Millbrook (19-0) played the entire overtime without its best player, Louisville recruit Eric Van der Heijden (21 points). But that ultimately meant that Demary (a game-high 22 points) took over, scoring the game’s final six points himself in a contest played in front of a COVID-limited but extremely loud crowd at Wheatmore High. (Saturday was the first time the N.C. basketball state championships had been played on a high school campus in 40 years).

The players wore masks, as has become usual in a COVID-centric season. By the end both sides were drained, but only one side was happy.

That’s the way it so often goes. That’s the deal we all make with the terrible beauty of sports. If you want to feel the unfettered joy of the wins, you must also feel the temporary devastation of the losses.

Said Millbrook’s Redford Dunton, describing the game’s many swings: “Fun. Stressful. I mean you can literally put every emotion into one game, and that’s what you got tonight.”

Both teams had been undefeated all season entering the contest, although Millbrook had played twice as many games. Ardrey Kell endured a 24-day pause due to COVID-19 and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ decision to temporarily suspend athletics.

The Knights, though, had returned from that pause without missing a beat. They had upset North Mecklenburg to win the 4A West regional Tuesday to make it to the state final. They shot 53.2% from the field in the championship, got 18 points and 11 rebounds from junior big man Elijah Gray (who fouled out but will one day be a Division I college player), got 14 points from Peyton Gerald — and still lost.

“In the locker room I told them how proud I was of them,” Craft said, “and how resilient they’ve been all year. Just. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t finish the game…. In overtime, we outplayed them until the last 17 seconds.”

In the press conference after the game, Carver’s eyes glistened as he described an uncle who had passed away recently from COVID-related complications. He would have more time to mourn his uncle now, Carver said, because “hooping is over.” Carver said he knew he would eventually move on from the defeat.

“But this one — it hurts,” he said.

Then the press conference ended, and the coach patted his player gently on the back, and they got up and walked toward the bus for the quiet ride home.