CHAFFEE -- Advance boys basketball coach Bubba Wheetley told his players he wasn't sure if they could pull off the feat they did Thursday night or not.
"I've always told these kids I'm not sure if they're winners or not," Wheetley said. "Well they proved to me tonight they are winners."
Advance defeated Oran 88-79 to win the Class 2 District 3 championship after falling to Oran in the title game for three consecutive seasons.
"It means a lot," Advance senior Lane Below said. "It really does. I feel like -- I know I haven't, but I feel like these guys have beat me my whole life, and it feels good to finally come out on top once. I'm glad that it's this year that it happened."
Below finished with 40 points and made 9 of 10 free throws in the closing minutes to help the Hornets (19-9) seal the victory. He scored 14 points in the first half and 26 in the second.
"I always have the mindset to be aggressive, but I'm not going to force things just like [in the semifinals against Chaffee] I wasn't going to force things because they were throwing more defenders at me," Below said. "I'm just taking whatever's there and going to be aggressive. If I can score, I'm going to score, but if somebody's open I'm going to get them the ball."
Below was perhaps the most calm person in an otherwise raucous Chaffee High School gym. As teammates roared after big plays, fans screamed with almost every whistle and both teams seemed to take control of the game for stretches, Below was notably stone-faced.
"I didn't want to get too hyped up or too excited," Below said. "I've felt like the last couple years I've been in district title games, I've been too amped up and too excited playing. I just needed to relax and let the game come to me."
Oran raced out to a 9-2 lead to start what would become a back-and-forth affair before Advance rallied to take a 20-19 lead by the end of the first quarter.
The Hornets continued to grow their lead in the second, and went up by as many as nine points with 1 minute, 33 seconds left in the first half -- a gap Oran closed to 41-35 by the break.
The Eagles (21-8), who advanced to the Class 2 final four a year ago, started the second half on a 20-4 run to take a 55-45 lead with 2:30 left in the third quarter.
"We talked about making a few changes to how we were attacking on offense, and I felt like they missed some shots, and we defended and got out in transition and got some easy looks," Oran coach Joe Shoemaker said.
Wheetley took a timeout with 2:25 left in the quarter and delivered a simple message to his players to "calm down."
"The defense broke down a little bit -- turnovers, a few turnovers and they hit shots," Wheetley said. "They hit some big shots. We talked about it throughout the game, 'Hey, we can't get up too high and can't get low because you're going to have your ups and downs. They're going to have their runs, we're going to have ours. You've just got to stay focused.'"
After the teams exchanged turnovers, Below hit a 3-pointer to stop the Eagles' run and start a 10-2 spurt for the Hornets, who trailed 59-55 entering the fourth.
An identical 10-2 run is what ultimately made the difference in the fourth quarter. Advance senior Austin Miller hit a 3-pointer to start the run with 5:57 to go and Below capped it off with a 3-pointer from the corner and a basket inside with 4:11 left in the game that gave his team a 74-63 lead. The Hornets made 12 of 14 free throws over the final 1:37.
"I'm just so proud of the basketball team we have," Shoemaker said following the loss. "I respect these guys so much and our seniors. This was my first seventh- grade group when I came to Oran that I started with, and I talked to them about when I came to Oran no one thought of Oran as a basketball team.
"They'd only won two district championships in school history and we put three in a row up, and the other thing is this year's team -- I know we fell short tonight, but to get 20 wins in a season is something that hadn't been accomplished but a few times at Oran, and we still accomplished it this year."
Standout guard Seth Ressel and three others will graduate, including Chance Tenkhoff, who was kept out of the game by a broken leg suffered late in the season.
Advance 20 21 14 33 -- 88
Oran 19 16 24 20 -- 79
ADVANCE (88) -- Austin Miller 19, Lane Below 40, Eli Seger 12, Alex Morse 2, Dalton Wilson 13, Dawson Mayo 2. FG 31, FT 20-23, F 15. (3-pointers: Miller 3, Below 3. Fouled out: none)
ORAN (79) -- Thomas Trankler 8, Jacob Priggel 20, Seth Ressel 21, Garrison Mangels 6, Hunter Schlosser 24. (3-pointers: Priggel 2, Ressel 1. Fouled out: Schlosser)