Cheboygan boys fall in final seconds at home to Grayling, 57-55

CHEBOYGAN – Coming out of the holiday break, the Cheboygan boys basketball team played arguably its best game of the season against a solid Grayling squad on Wednesday night.

However, for as well as they played, the Chiefs weren’t able to come up with the clutch plays down the stretch to seal what would've been a huge win.

As a result, the Vikings – who did make a crucial last-second shot – ended up leaving Cheboygan with a narrow 57-55 victory over the Chiefs in an entertaining non-conference clash.

“Very, very disappointing – it's a game I thought we should’ve won,” said Cheboygan coach Jason Friday. “They made a couple shots late. We had a five-point lead for several possessions in that fourth quarter, and Coach (Scott) Hancock was like, ‘Get it to seven, get it to seven,’ and we had great looks, and that ball just didn’t go in the hole.”

The Chiefs (2-4) found themselves with a five-point lead midway through the fourth, but the Vikings (4-2) refused to quit. With over a minute left, Grayling junior sharpshooter Ethan Kucharek connected on one of five made 3-pointers to tie the contest at 55. The Vikings had a chance to take the lead, but a pair of missed free throws gave the ball back to the Chiefs with about 30 seconds left. Unfortunately for Cheboygan, it turned the ball back over to the Vikings, who called a timeout and had 15 seconds to win the game.

In a well-executed play out of the timeout, the Vikings found a way to free up junior Kaleb Hall, who took a pass from teammate Maddox Mead, got to the basket and scored a layup to put Grayling up two with 3.1 seconds remaining.

“Honestly, we started maybe a second or two too early, but the kids executed exactly what we wanted to,” said Grayling coach LJ Mead, discussing the game-winning play. “We thought we could slip the screen right away because of the way they were defending us. We also knew that on the backside where the shooters were, they’d been keying on those guys, so we were going away, and then Maddox (Mead) came off that slip screen, delivered a nice little lefty hook pass and executed it well, and we put the ball in the hoop.”

Cheboygan had one last shot to win the game, but a desperation 3-point attempt from junior guard Kaleb Goodrich hit off the backboard, giving the Vikings a come-from-behind road win.

The loss for the Chiefs was a painful one, especially because they were solid for much of the contest.

“It stings, but Coach Hancock made a point. He said, ‘If we make one more shot, we’re in the locker room celebrating and having a good ol' time,’” Friday said. “When you’re involved with sports, you’re going to be on the end of some games when you walk into the locker room and say, ‘We should’ve won that game,’ and that’s a game we should’ve won."

Despite not playing a game in over two weeks, the Chiefs showed no signs of rust, avenging a three-point deficit after one quarter and taking a 31-30 lead into the break. The Chiefs kept their strong play going in the third, going up by six points when Goodrich made a field goal. The Vikings battled back to cut the deficit to one, but the Chiefs went back up three after senior guard Connor Gibbons sunk a mid-range jumper just before the third-quarter buzzer expired.

“I thought we made great decisions all game,” Friday said. “I thought we weathered their storm in the first half, and we kept battling, we got the lead, and there was like there was a lid on the hole. The name of the game is that you’ve got to put points in the board, and we just didn’t make shots."

The Vikings received a huge offensive boost from Kucharek, who finished with a game-high 24 points.

“He’s one of our dudes,” Mead said of Kucharek. “We thought the way that they played that we could get him on the backside and get him some shots, so we were setting a bunch of flares in there for him. This is his sport, he loves it, and on his end, he can knock down shots.”

Gibbons scored 14 points to lead the Chiefs, while Goodrich finished with 12, junior guard Brennen Thater added 11, junior guard Ethan Gibbons scored eight, junior forward Caden Gardner netted seven, and junior guard Patrick Watson chipped in with three.

“We only had six kids at practice on Monday, so I had no idea what we were going to get, and I was very encouraged by what we saw,” Friday said. “One of the things we talked about in the locker room was, ‘Are we getting better?’ and it was unanimous that we are getting better. We talked about being consistent. We’ll play a good half, we’ll play a good three quarters, but putting a good four quarters together is something we’re striving to do, and even though we were outscored 14-9 in the fourth quarter, we didn’t play bad. We just didn’t make shots, and that’s of course what the game comes down to.”

For Grayling, Tristan Demlow finished with 11 points, Mead scored 10, and Fletcher Quinlan added eight.

“We were frustrated, we didn’t feel like our kids were engaged in the first half like they should be and need to be, but in terms of that mental toughness that you speak of, that speaks volumes,” Mead said. “When it counted, they did what they needed to in the last two minutes. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t play that way for 32 minutes.”

In the junior varsity contest, Cheboygan picked up a 59-51 victory over Grayling. Carson Kiefer scored 20 points to lead the Chiefs, who received 11 points from Andrew Kiefer, 10 from Owen Kimbrell, nine from Jack Ekdahl, five from Luke Hoskins, and two apiece from Ethan Goulet and Sam Brown.

Cheboygan travels to Sault Ste. Marie for a Straits Area Conference matchup on Thursday.

This article originally appeared on Cheboygan Daily Tribune: Cheboygan boys fall in final seconds at home to Grayling, 57-55