Wild overtime loss ends season for Steers basketball News Staff Wed, 02/21/2024 - 1:07 pm
- (TC GORDON | THE GRAHAM LEADER) Senior Tyson Weaver drives to the basket for a fastbreak layup attempt during Graham’s bi-district game Tuesday, Feb. 20 against Sweetwater. The game went to overtime and the Steers took a hard 64-60 loss to end their season.
- (TC GORDON | THE GRAHAM LEADER) Senior Keion Shead finishes a layup after getting past Sweetwater defenders during Graham’s bi-district game Tuesday, Feb. 20. Shead finished the game with a team-high 22 points but the Steers fell in overtime 64-60 which ended their season.
- (TC GORDON | THE GRAHAM LEADER) Junior Cash Bowen (30) puts up a reverse layup attempt over multiple defenders during Graham’s bi-district game Tuesday, Feb. 20 against Sweetwater. The game included a wild finish in regulation and the Steers ended with a 64-60 loss in overtime to conclude their season.
- (TC GORDON | THE GRAHAM LEADER) Senior Riley Lanham sets himself up for a potential shot during Graham’s bi-district game against Sweetwater. The two teams battled all night but the Steers ended their season as they took a 64-60 loss Tuesday, Feb. 20.
The Graham Steers went into their bi-district matchup with Sweetwater expecting a battle, as the two teams had met once at the beginning of the regular season.
Tuesday night’s playoff game didn’t prove to be much different in terms of intensity, but this time Graham came out on the wrong side of things and saw their season officially end with a 64-60 overtime loss.
In a wild series of events near the end of regulation, the Steers were seconds away from earning the win, before the Mustangs forced overtime. With the teams tied at 54-54 with a minute remaining, senior Riley Lanham passed the ball inside to junior Cash Bowen who was set up in the post.
Bowen backed his defender down, spun and banked in a close-range shot off the glass to give Graham the 56-54 lead. Sweetwater called consecutive timeouts to set up their final play with about four seconds left.
The Mustangs ran a play and shot a wild 3-pointer that missed everything, which gave Graham possession. But on the Steers’ inbound play, junior Ty Thompson’s pass hit the ceiling, which ruled it out-of-bounds and gave Sweetwater the ball back with less than a second on the clock.
On Sweetwater’s inbound pass, senior Keion Shead knocked the ball away, which would have secured the victory. But one of the referees whistled a foul on Thompson for holding a Mustang player. He knocked down both free throws to tie the game at 56-56 and forced the overtime period.
Both teams were in the bonus during the extra time and most of the points scored came at the free throw line. Sweetwater went up 61-57 before Graham senior Tyson Weaver drained a 3-pointer from the corner to pull it back to 61-60 and give his team hope.
However, over the final minutes, Graham’s offense stalled and Sweetwater made 3-of-4 free throws to seal the game and end the Steers’ season.
“I thought we competed hard and played hard. That one hurt, I know I said that a while ago,” head coach Kris Hise said. “That's a tough way to lose it, free throws at the end of the game when there's only 0.11 seconds left, we can't get a shot up. That hurts…but I was proud of our guys that competed hard.”
It hadn’t been a perfect game for the Steers by any means leading up to the wild finale. Turnovers had plagued the team throughout the night, but they still led early on and always kept things close after giving up a lead.
Graham set the tone with Bowen winning the opening tipoff then sprinting into position below the basket for an easy two points off an assist from Weaver. Seniors Lanham, Shead and Weaver did the rest of the scoring for the Steers in the opening quarter and they led 15-13 after the first.
In the second quarter, however, Graham went through a cold stretch where they went about five minutes without scoring a point. Bowen broke the drought with an offensive rebound and putback, followed later by a fastbreak layup and foul for Shead. Despite the struggles, the Steers led 28-27 at halftime.
Sweetwater’s offense picked up in the second half as they built up a six-point lead midway through the quarter before a mid-range jumper from Thompson and a 3-pointer from Weaver brought it back to 35-34. But the Mustangs stayed ahead and finished the third quarter leading 43-39.
During the fourth quarter, Sweetwater built up their biggest lead of the game at 54-47. But Graham had no quit as they rattled off a string of nine straight points to tie the game and then take the lead before the craziness happened and they ended up with the loss.
The Steers were led by their senior Shead, who finished with a double-double of 22 points and 11 rebounds. The junior Bowen had 14 points and nine rebounds while Thompson also recorded a double-double with 12 points and 11 rebounds.
Although the season didn’t end the way anybody wanted, Hise was proud of his team’s performance and the work his upperclassmen have done to help get this program where it is now. The team finished with an 18-16 record overall, going 5-3 in district and coming in second place.
“They've come a long way the last three years from the first year I was here with us hardly winning any games at all, to putting up back-to-back runner-up in district and just competing,” Hise said. “I'm proud of (the seniors). They’ve laid a good foundation for everybody else.”
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