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Late foul lifts LaBrae past Girard
By ERIC FORTUNE
GIRARD
It wasn’t the Zapruder film, but there were three different viewpoints when it came to assessing Peyton Aldridge’s final shot, which came with nine-tenths of a second left.
The viewpoints don’t begin to explain how the LaBrae Vikings and Girard Indians put on a show for first place in the All-American Conference’s National Division, only to see it come down to free throws as the Vikings survived 49-47 on Friday night.
“That game didn’t deserve that ending,” Girard coach Craig Hannon said. “That’s what I saw. That’s all. They played great. We played great. Both played hard. It’s a shame they took it out of the kids’ hands.”
Tied at 47 with 7.2 seconds left, the Vikings — who had to go the length of the court — found Aldridge from behind the 3-point line in front of the LaBrae bench. Aldridge caught the pass, turned and shot and was fouled.
When asked if he was fouled, Aldridge said, “I couldn’t really tell. I might have gotten bumped. I was in the heat of the moment, just catch and shoot.”
Girard had a foul to give and LaBrae coach Chad Kiser said he thought Hannon wanted the Indians to foul, just not on a shot. Aldridge made two of the three free throws to seal the game. He finished with 21 points and 13 rebounds.
“Obviously, on the last one, we just wanted to try and get the ball in Peyton’s hands — let him come down and at least get a shot,” Kiser said. “If not, we would have gone to overtime. It was our best shot to get one off — just him shooting over the top of somebody.
“Obviously, it’s a tough way [for Girard] to lose.”
After a free throw from Aldridge made it 47-45, Jimmy Standohar tied it up for the Indians at 47-all and it seemed like the game was destined for overtime.
“So did I,” Hannon said. “We just didn’t execute at the end. We should have had the last shot. They made one more play than we did. I hate to say that as they technically didn’t make the shot at the end.”
The Indians (13-3) had their chances in the final minutes only to see their execution falter when they needed it most, as they got what they needed on the defensive end with three turnovers from the Vikings (14-3).
“We were just anxious,” Kiser said. “Justin [Jenkins] was trying to make a play instead of just swinging it around in the zone. They were just aggressive mistakes. You live with an aggressive mistake. I think we still did a good job of getting stops. Those were three chances they had to go and take the lead. We did a good of making stops on our end.”
The game seemed headed for a rout, as the Vikings quickly got out to an 11-0 advantage thanks to the inside presence of Aldridge and Marcell Richardson.
Hannon called a timeout to settle down his players and as they’ve done all season, they battled back on just three field goals in the opening quarter.
“It’s not the way you want to come out. It’s not the way you want to start a game especially against a good team like LaBrae,” Hannon said. “I thought we just battled the rest of the way. I knew it was going to be a tight game even when they jumped up 11-0. We just had to relax a little bit.”
Dylan O’Hara single handily kept the Indians within striking distance scoring 11 of his game high 22 points in the second quarter.