Sometimes in basketball, its just about hitting the shot.
Sure the game is multi-faceted with intricacies and nuance around every corner.
But whats also true is that a lot of the time, wins and losses come down to whether a shot rolls in or out.
For Allen County, that particular shot on Saturday night spun around the rim keeping everyone holding their collective breath before finally swirling in like water going down a drain. Relieved, the crowd burst into jubilation. The Red Devils had won a hard-earned, back-and-forth 70-67 win over Labette County to push their record to 2-0 in the young season.
This shot, in particular, came from sophomore point guard Perry Carroll who heaved it from roughly five feet from the halfcourt stripe as the 2.4 seconds left on the clock expired.
Incredible shot by Perry, head coach Andy Shaw said. I wish we werent in that situation where we had to win like that but the end result is what matters. Our sophomore stepped up and made a wild play to win a game.
Simple as that, right? Not quite.
No, the lead-up to the game-winning buzzer beater was nearly as crazy as the shot itself.
After a poor first half where shots didnt fall for the Red Devils, Allen found itself down only six thanks in part to making 11 more free throws than Labette throughout the period.
Going back to halftime, we shot 27 percent in the first half and we were only down six, Shaw said. So that was a big positive for me. I figured wed have been down 20 or more with a stat sheet like that but we werent and we needed to take advantage of that. And to their credit, we played much better in the second half.
The Cardinals successfully kept the Red Devils at bay for the majority of the second half. But then the Red Devils began to mount a slow creep until they trailed by just one point with five minutes to play.
Free throws from sophomore Jamaal Clifton gave Allen their first lead in what seemed like forever and the Red Devils clung to it, leading by as much as five points down the stretch before some clutch shooting on the part of the Cardinals made the game into the photo finish that it was.
With 11.1 seconds to play, freshman Malik Hardmon, who had a standout day scoring 15 points and 10 rebounds for his first collegiate double-double, got a breakaway lay-up to push the Red Devils ahead by three points.
Hardmon, like the team in general, struggled early in the game only to explode in the second half scoring 10 points and grabbing five rebounds.
He missed his first two or three layups which were ones that hed make in practice 90 percent of the time. I told him to calm down and that he needed to make himself finish those. Once we got into the second half he did that. His double-double was huge for us.
