Close and far: 4 takeaways as Calvary, Routt win in different ways
JACKSONVILLE — Jacksonville Routt boys basketball coach Will Whalen got to see a game come down to the wire with one team's chances hanging on the fate of a half-court heave.
He was more than happy it wasn't while he was coaching. He can save that stress for another day.
After Whalen's No. 1 seed Routt dispatched No. 6 Greenfield 67-43 in the first game of the Class 1A Routt Regional semifinals on Wednesday, No. 5 Calvary rallied from a 15-point deficit to beat No. 4 Winchester West Central 69-68. West Central's Zack Evans, who led all scorers with 32 points, came up short on his desperation try from midcourt at the buzzer.
Routt (26-3) will face Calvary (25-7) for the regional title on Friday at 7 p.m. inside the Routt Dome. The winner will advance to next week's Hardin Calhoun Sectional semifinals.
Calvary's slow start
Evans, a junior guard, torched Calvary for 21 first-half points on an efficient 9 of 13 shooting. He hit his first six shots and it didn’t seem as if the Saints had an answer.
But those 21 points came in the first 11 minutes, 32 seconds of the game as the Cougars (23-9) mounted a 31-16 lead. West Central didn’t score again the rest of the half but even worse, Evans picked up his second and third fouls in a span of 34 seconds late in the second quarter.
That allowed Calvary to claw within eight points.
“Every game we’ve played this year, we’ve had a slow start,” Calvary coach Tives Gardner said. “I’m talking every game we’ve played. For some reason, we just cannot get out of the blocks. But when we do get out of the blocks, it’s a beautiful thing.
“When we’re eight points down in the way that we play, eight points is nothing with us because we score so quickly.”
Saints need another helping hand
With 3:52 left in the third and Calvary down 38-31, the Saints needed a spark. Ben Crowder had 13 points at the time, Luke Blackford had nine and Connor Brown had seven. But the Saints still needed something to get over the hump.
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Out of a timeout, Calvary bench player James Toller, a 6-foot-2 center, gave the Saints another dimension. He made consecutive baskets — one off a feed from sophomore Amari Anderson and another on a putback — to cut West Central’s lead to three points. In the fourth, Toller’s fifth bucket gave the Saints their first lead since 12-8 midway through the first quarter.
Before Toller fouled out, he was 6-for-6 with five rebounds to finish with 12 points — all his scoring came in the second half.
“I knew my team needed me, it was time to get out of my shell, time to get my confidence up, to actually play hard and to play for what I play for,” Toller said. “As soon as the first one hit, I knew it was over with, I knew I had my confidence back, I knew I could do it.”
“It felt awesome knowing I could help lead my team because I’ve always shied away from the leadership positions but knowing I was able to be a leader today really helped me out with my confidence.”
Gardner said it was an example of how far Toller had come over the years.
“Here’s a kid who when he first came into Calvary, we had six big guys ... and he was the sixth-best player out of all those guys,” Gardner said. “The credit goes to him because he put in the work. Being a senior and taking that role of coming off the bench is huge for us because we ask him to do one thing: make layups and play defense. And that’s what he did. He’s done that for us all year.
“He’s been a great addition to this team and I don’t know where we’d be without him.”
No breathing room
Calvary’s 14-4 run to start the final period gave the Saints a 60-54 lead. But Evans, who had just two points in the third, scored nine points in the fourth while teammate Chance Little had eight of his 24 in the same period.
“We just had some bad timely turnovers down the stretch that led to baskets,” West Central coach Ryan Sichting said. “If you had told me before the game that Evans and Little would combine for 56 points, I would’ve been pretty confident that we would’ve come away with the win.”
Evans’ second 3-pointer of the quarter pulled West Central within 69-65 with 21 seconds. The Cougars still had some life when Anderson missed the front end of a one-and-bonus free-throw opportunity. Evans barreled to the basket, scored a putback basket, and made the free throw from the contact he drew. While West Central was within one point, Calvary had the ball and just 5.2 seconds left.
After Calvary’s Luke Blackford missed both free throws with :03.7 left, Evans sprinted to the midcourt line and tried to throw in a game-winner but the try harmlessly fell to the hardwood.
Evans finished with a game-high 32 points.
Brown led Calvary with 18 points and teammates Crowder and Blackford each had 15. Toller’s 12 gave the Saints four players in double figures while Anderson nearly was the fifth with nine points.
“Give all credit to West Central: they’re solid, they’re fundamentally sound, they’re well-coached but our guys just ball,” Gardner said. “My thing all year has been: you play defense to give you a chance to stay in the game and just hoop and just play smart.”
Double-double for Wilson
Greenfield (20-13) didn’t have the size to match up with Routt’s 6-foot-5 senior Michael Wilson and he dominated the Tigers.
He scored 22 points on 10 of 15 shooting and grabbed 12 rebounds.
“They didn’t really have a big man so I was just getting it inside there, working it back out when they’d collapse a double team or a triple team,” Wilson said.
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Routt was content to open the game in a zone defense to keep the Tigers out of the paint but Rockets’ coach Will Whalen changed into a half-court trapping defense midway through the second quarter.
That allowed Routt to go from 15-14 ahead to 27-16 by halftime.
“The trap turned the game up and the speed up and then it turned the speed up on the offense, too,” Whalen said. “We didn’t run a ton of offense there in the second half — we used our athletic ability and drove lanes and found open guys. That’s not something we usually do; we usually run set plays but the game dictated we play it that way.”
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Nolan Killion added 19 points for the Rockets while Will Merwin and Bryson Mossman each had 10. Routt shot 26 of 48 and went 6-for-11 from behind the 3-point line. Routt went 3-0 against Greenfield and it was the largest margin of the other two games: Routt won 50-44 on Dec. 27 and 59-46 on Feb. 3.
“Coming into the game, we had the same plan as we did before: just get it into me, everybody was making shots, I got it back out to them,” Wilson said.
Talon Albrecht led Greenfield with 14 points while Dylan Pembrook scored 11.
Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Down 15, Calvary mounts comeback to meet Routt for 1A regional title
