Bowling Green School hung on for a 37-35 win over Ben’s Ford Christian School in a game that came down to the final seconds at home Tuesday.
Bowling Green led 37-35 late in the game.
The Buccaneers had a chance to go up two possessions with 23.9 seconds left, but missed the front end of a 1-and-1.
Following the missed free throw, both teams came up with steals — Ben’s Ford missed a layup and the rebound was deflected out of bounds on Bowling Green.
The Eagles had the ball with 4.6 seconds left and called timeout, but the shot at the buzzer was no good, as Bowling Green won by two.
Tuesday’s game was close throughout.
The biggest lead by either team was 10 at 28-18 by Ben’s Ford with 5:46 left in the third quarter after Dalton Crain hit one of his three 3-pointers. Crain had 12 points.
Bowling Green coach Jaron Edwards called timeout after the three and spent the next 3:33 on an 8-0 run to close the gap to just two.
“We come out in the first half, we weren’t ready to play,” Edwards said. “We tried to get them ready the day before in practice, they weren’t ready to play. I could tell by the way the effort was in practice yesterday. We came out sluggish in the first half, made a big adjustment in the second half, came out and just basically told them they had to fly around on the defensive side of the ball and they did that. We forced more turnovers in the second half and started knocking our shots down.”
Jackson Dobraska began the run by hitting a field goal to make it 28-20 with 5:30 left. Braden Edwards then hit a shot, got fouled and knocked down the free throw for the 3-point play. Dobraska hit a 3-pointer to make it 28-26 with 2:13 to go.
“We just had to play better, stop turning the ball over, make our shots and get rebounds when we had to get them,” Bowling Green sophomore Rece Dillon said, about the comeback.
Dillon led all scorers with 18 points and he drained six 3-pointers.
Ben’s Ford’s Jarvis Dawson took a pass from Tyler Winstead, got fouled and split from the free-throw line for a 29-26 lead. Drew Wagner made it a one-point game with a tip in.
The Eagles’ lead was still one at 32-31 late in the third quarter, but Rece Dillon nailed a 3-pointer for Bowling Green with 17 seconds left and the Buccaneers led 34-32 through three quarters.
Each team scored three points in the final period, as the game went down to the wire.
“We need to learn how to handle the pressure,” Ben’s Ford coach Landon Tims said. “I thought we did an OK job, we got the ball up the court when we needed to, but at the end of the day, we had a few too many turnovers. But I think the game at the end boiled down to missed free throws again. We lost by two points, we missed five free throws (in the fourth quarter), and a couple of those were 1-and-1s.
“When you miss the front end of 1-and-1s, you don’t even get to shoot the second one. In a game where you’re not shooting a lot of free throws, it really comes down to you’ve got to make them. You’ve got to make free throws to put yourself in a position to win.”
Ben’s Ford finished 3-for-12 from the line for the game and missed the front end of two 1-and-1s. The team was 1-for-6 from the charity stripe in the fourth quarter.
Braden Edwards posted 10 points, which included a 3-pointer.
Dobraska posted seven points and Wagner added two in the win.
Winstead recorded nine points while Dawson had eight, Isaac Wascom tallied four and Tucker Keating added two for Ben’s Ford.