March 12, 2015
Haunting final seconds doom NMCC against Strafford in Class 3 semifinals
It's one thing to lose.It's another to lose in the heart-breaking fashion that New Madrid County Central did on Thursday afternoon in a Class 3 state semifinal.
By Derek James -- Standard Democrat
sports@standard-democrat.com
COLUMBIA -- It's one thing to lose.
It's another to lose in the heart-breaking fashion that New Madrid County Central did on Thursday afternoon in the Class 3 state semifinals against Strafford where the Eagles saw its state championship hopes erased in a 63-61 loss at the Hearnes Center in Columbia.
The Eagles found themselves inbounding the ball underneath its own basket trailing by two with eight seconds left. The ball went to standout senior Willie Jimerson, who drove hard to the basket but was cut off by Strafford's Dallas Hester.
Jimerson rose up and found senior teammate Asten Newsom open underneath, but Newsom's shot was partially deflected by Dalton Taylor and hit the underside of the rim.
With three seconds left, Newsom battled for the rebound with Jimerson, who pulled it away, but Jimerson lost the ball off the top of Newsom's head and couldn't get a final shot up as Strafford cleared it and ran out the remaining time on the clock.
NMCC (25-5) moves to the third place game where it will play Madison College Prep (18-12), which lost 61-48 to Barstow in the other semifinal. The third place game is scheduled for Friday at 6 p.m. at Mizzou Arena.
After Thursday's game, NMCC coach Travis Day wondered what might have been as the Eagles were attempting to win its first state title since capturing back-to-back championships in 2000 and 2001 and finishing second in 2002.
"We're hurt about it because when you come this far you want to make it to Saturday," said Day, who was a member of the Eagles' first state championship in 1988. "The goal is to get to Saturday to give yourself a chance. But at the same time we still are successful from where we started. If you were to ask anybody in our community that New Madrid County Central would get to the final four, nobody would believe that."
On the final play, Newsom, who led the Eagles with 12 points and three steals, described the sequence in which he and Jimerson tried to tie the game.
"When I got the ball I went up and kind of smacked my hand a little bit so I didn't make it," Newsom said. "But we both went for the rebound. I let it go once he said he got it, so once I let it go I guess we just both lost control of it."
It was reminiscent of the Eagles' play at the end of the first overtime of its quarterfinal victory over Charleston in which Newsom missed a close shot only to have Jimerson rebound the miss, get fouled, and sink two free throws with no time left to send the game into a second overtime where the Eagles prevailed 105-92.
This time the Eagles could not come up with the big play.
"It got to Asten and they kind of blocked the first one and then it was just trying to succeed," Day said. "We had two guys going after it and kind of fumbled it and unfortunately we ran out of time. I told these guys in the locker room I'm proud of them no matter what happened because all I ask my guys is to give yourself a chance. Give yourself a chance to be successful. If we play out that opportunity again, we score. Just that time we didn't."
Even more disheartening for the Eagles was that they held a seven-point lead with 3:59 left in the game and still held a 61-55 lead with 2:24 left.
Strafford (29-3) finished the game on an 8-0 run, all by 6-foot-2 senior Grant Boswell, who hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to three with 2:08 left. Twenty seconds later Jimerson was whistled for an offensive foul, which led to Boswell's tying 3-pointer with 1:26 remaining.
"I think that gave us a lot of momentum there," Boswell said. "The first one we were running our dribble-drive offense and I caught it and let it fly and that gave us a lot of momentum. The second one they just left me open. I think that really turned the game around."
Following the tying shot, Boswell then rebounded Chris Farr's missed 3-pointer. Strafford was then able to run time off the clock before calling timeout with 18 seconds left to draw up a final play.
When the teams broke huddle, Strafford's Hester passed to Boswell streaking towards the goal where he drew a foul with 14 seconds left. Boswell, who went 9 of 10 from the free throw line in the game, sank both shots to give Strafford its first lead since mid-third quarter.
"I knew I had to make both of them if we wanted a chance to win," Boswell said. "If I only made one we could slip up on the defensive end. That just gave us a lot better chance if I made both of them."
Now trailing 63-61, NMCC called timeout and drew up its final play.
On the ensuing inbounds, Jimerson penetrated and attempted to pass to Newsom but it was deflected out of bounds by Strafford's Brady Collier with eight seconds left to set up the final play.
"We knew they were going to go to the basket because we had a hard time keeping them out of the paint, especially in the second half," Strafford coach Mike Wilson said. "The Jimerson kid is phenomenal. He's so strong and so quick. We knew they were going to get to the rim. I thought when they tried to pass to the big kid (Newsom) I thought Brady Collier had a steal. He knocked it out of bounds and I thought he had it with two hands. It didn't. They ran an out of bounds play we had seen on film. Got a stop. We stayed in front of somebody for a change and then Dalton came up with the big block. You can say luck. You can say skill. We're happy to be lucky to be playing on Saturday I guess."
Strafford controlled the first half as they led 14-10 after one quarter of play and led by as much as 12 at three different points in the second quarter.
The Eagles closed the quarter on an 8-3 run to trim Strafford's lead to 35-28 by halftime.
"For a little bit in the second quarter we weren't us," Day said. "That first quarter it was jitters. We were being too passive. We're an aggressive team on the offensive end and the defensive end and when we started doing that is when we got back in the game."
The momentum carried into the third quarter as NMCC took control, out-scoring Strafford 18-5 in the period.
The Eagles took its first lead of the game on a sensational up-and-under scoop shot by sophomore Javarcus Word while drawing the foul. Word hit the free throw to lead 39-37.
Later, a 3-pointer by Farr and a layup by Mikeal Walker capped a 12-0 run to match the Eagles' biggest lead of the night at 44-37.
Hester broke the streak with a conventional 3-point play, but Jimerson answered with a jumper with seven seconds left in the third to take a 46-40 lead into the final frame.
The Eagles still held a 46-41 lead in the early part of the fourth but Hester hit a 3-pointer and then got loose for a breakaway two-handed slam to tie the score at 46-46.
It was the last time the score was tied until the final moments.
Jimerson, who averages 24 points per game, was held to 11 points on 4 of 6 shooting and 3 of 8 free throw shooting. He also had a team-high nine assists and eight rebounds. Walker scored nine while Farr and senior Drew Palmer each had eight points.
Strafford is normally a man-to-man defensive team, but Wilson had his team go to a zone for much of the game in an effort to contain Jimerson.
"We're mostly man, but we knew that keeping Jimerson out of the paint was going to be a chore," Wilson said. "If we couldn't keep him out of the paint then we were probably going to get beat. The man was working early but we got in foul trouble. We tried to keep people on the floor so we went zone and it was working. They quit looking at the rim. It was allowing us to stay out of foul trouble and it was allowing us to help keep Jimerson in check a little bit."
Strafford, which took third in the state last year when it defeated Madison Prep, was led by Boswell's game-high 23 points. Hester had 14 points and Kyle Foley scored 11.
Strafford went 20 of 23 from the free throw line compared to NMCC only going 8 of 18 from the line.
"This time of year good teams like that are not going to panic, just like we didn't panic," Day said. "You don't expect a good team to panic and you just know that run's going to come. You just hope that you can stop them and answer it."
Strafford 14 21 5 23 -- 63
NMCC 10 18 18 15 -- 61
STRAFFORD (63) -- Grant Boswell 23, Dallas Hester 14, Kyle Foley 11, Brady Collier 9, Dalton Taylor 4, Luke Oliver 2. FG 19, FT 20-23, F 16. (3-pointers: Boswell 2, Hester 2, Foley 1. Fouled out: none).
NMCC (61) -- Asten Newsom 12, Willie Jimerson 11, Mikeal Walker 9, Chris Farr 8, Drew Palmer 8, T.J. Clark 5, Javarcus Word 4, Deondray Jenkins 4. FG 24, FT 8-18, F 21. (3-pointers: Farr 2, Palmer 2, Clark 1. Fouled out: Walker).
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