Saturday, January 26, 2019
By Dan Hiner
dhiner@vindy.com
Beaver Township
With 14.6 seconds left, Brandon Kilpatrick hit two free throws to give the Lakeview boys basketball team a three-point lead.
Chris Brooks’ 3-pointer at the buzzer missed and the Bulldogs escaped South Range High School with a 39-36 win over the Raiders on Friday night.
Kilpatrick scored five of his 10 points in the final 2:22.
Ben Irons went to the free-throw line to tie the game at 37. He made the first, but Dante DiGaetano fouled Kilpatrick on the second free-throw attempt.
Kilpatrick is familiar to late-game free throws. He hit a pair in the Bulldogs’ win over Struthers earlier in the season.
“Being a sophomore, he’s playing major minutes,” Lakeview head coach Ryan Fitch said. “And I give him credit. He goes up to the line, knocks two down for us and forces them to have to take a highly contested 3 at the end.”
The Bulldogs (12-3, 6-2 Northeast 8) beat the Raiders 63-54 in their first meeting on Dec. 14, but the offenses struggled in the rematch.
Lakeview was 13 for 37 (35.1 percent) from the field while the Raiders were 14 for 44 (31.8 percent). Both teams were 2 of 14 from behind the 3-point line.
The Raiders (11-5, 5-3 NE8) started the game on a 7-0 run, but Lakeview took a 10-9 lead at the end of the first quarter. Neither team led by more than four points the rest of the way.
“It came down to just grinding a win out and finding a way in the last two quarters to try to find a way to value each possession — take really good shots because we knew we’re more than one, usually, with their defense,” Fitch said.
AJ McClellan scored 11 points with five rebounds to lead the Bulldogs. Daniel Evans and Jeff Remmick each scored seven points and grabbed five rebounds.
Jaxon Anderson scored 12 points for the Raiders. He was the only Raider to finished with double-digit points. Brandon Mikos finished with eight points and DiGaetano and Irons each scored seven.
“[Anderson] stopped most of the dry spells and did a real nice job for us,” South Range head coach John Cullen said. “We probably needed to give him a couple more touches and a couple more chances.”
Fitch said the last year’s postseason run and their ability to pull out close games this season show the players “aren’t afraid of anything.”
“They know when push comes to shove, we can defend,” Fitch said. “We can do the little things that we work on in practice, and really be able to take control of games tempo-wise.”
Gallery