Lone Peak silences Skyridge’s boisterous crowd with clutch fourth-quarter shots, upsets Falcons in 6A boys quarterfinals

Lone Peak’s Corbin Zentner snags a loose ball and dishes it to teammate Aaron Edwards as they play Skyridge in a 6A boys basketball quarterfinal game at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News

Senior Jared Jensen hits a big 3-pointer with a minute remaining to thwart Skyridge’s madcap rally, guides Cinderella Knights into the semifinals at the Huntsman Center.

SALT LAKE CITY — Jared Jensen had seen enough timidity from his teammates and heard enough taunting from the overwhelmingly pro-Skyridge crowd.

Having watched the Knights’ double-digit lead dwindle to almost nothing in the fourth quarter and the frenzy of a wild finish at the Huntsman Center ringing in his ears, the Lone Peak senior launched what many might call an ill-advised 3-pointer with just more than a minute left in the 6A boys basketball quarterfinal game.

Swish.

More tense moments followed, but Jensen’s big trey and clutch free throws by Jensen, Aaron Edwards and Robert Evans in the final minute proved to be the difference as the 12th-seeded Knights upset the fourth-seeded Falcons 74-73 to continue their unlikely run in the state tournament.

“Yeah, if I would have missed that shot, my coaches would have been pissed. I put a up a lot of shots, and I just have faith that they will go in,” said Jensen, who put his index finger to his lips and growled in the direction of Skyridge’s huge student section after the big make.

“Yeah, it felt good,” he said. “They were loud, so it was nice to shut them up.”

Lone Peak, which improved to 14-10, will meet top-seeded Davis at 7 p.m. Friday in a semifinal. Region 4 champion Skyridge, which swept the Knights by scores of 72-56 and 61-58 in the regular season, saw its season end with an 18-7 record. Trevon Snoddy had 31 points and Braden Housley added 22.

For Lone Peak, the heroics of Jensen, who finished with 21 points and four assists, and junior center Cameron Brimhall (26 points) were almost forgotten amidst a mild controversy in the final seconds.

After Snoddy hit a 3-pointer for Skyridge with 7.3 seconds remaining to cut the deficit to one, Lone Peak’s Edwards took his time gathering the ball and then never attempted to throw it inbounds, knowing the clock was running and Skyridge was out of timeouts.

When the horn sounded, it appeared the Knights had escaped. But the officials had started a five-count a second or two before Edwards picked up the ball, which they are supposed to do when they determine a player “doesn’t go immediately to the ball,” according to Jeff Cluff of the UHSAA.

So they put .05 seconds on the clock and awarded Skyridge the ball, the official saying he was raising his arm on the five-count a split-second before time expired. It didn’t matter, because Skyridge couldn’t get the tip it would have needed, and the Knights’ celebration began.

“We just had to come out and play the way we can play. We knew if we just stuck to our game plan we could beat them.” — Lone Peak’s Jared Jensen

“They are a good team, but we are just as good,” Jensen said, noting that Lone Peak was considered one of the top teams in the state before senior starters Jared Burton and Hunter Hannemann were lost for the season with ACL injuries.

Certainly, there’s not a better 10-loss team remaining in the bracket.

“We just had to come out and play the way we can play. We knew if we just stuck to our game plan we could beat them,” Jensen said.

For most of the game, that plan was working well. Lone Peak coach Rob Ross said teams figured out the Knights’ attack midway through conference play, so they went to an old offense installed by former LP coach Quincy Lewis years ago. Lone Peak led by as many as 17 points in the third quarter.

Skyridge unleashed a ferocious press and half-court trap and rallied in the fourth. The Knights went nearly five minutes without a field goal in the fourth before Jensen found Brimhall for a dunk with 2:30 left. Corbin Zentner, star of Lone Peak’s upset of Corner Canyon in a second-round game last Friday, hit a pull-up jumper and then Jensen followed with that “oh-no, oh-yes” 3-pointer as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“I kept telling our guys to try to be aggressive, try to attack these guys, and live with the consequences,” said Ross.

Jensen listened.

And then he quieted the Skyridge crowd.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2VnxsVo