NICEVILLE – Mosley junior Je’Quan Ward made just one shot from the field against Niceville Thursday night.
It turned out to be the biggest shot of his career.
With Mosley trailing District 1-6A foe Niceville 61-60 in the game’s final seconds, the Dolphins had the ball under their own basket with seven seconds to get off a winning shot. While Niceville defended well initially, the ball bounced Mosley’s – and Ward’s – way, as the Dolphin point guard corralled the rebound after a Josh Turner miss and banked in a layup as time expired to give Mosley an unlikely 62-61 victory.
“As soon as I saw the first shot was missed, the ball came right to me,” said Ward, who scored 12 points. “I just thought “This is it’ and I picked it up and put it up as fast as I could. As soon as I shot it, I heard the buzzer and I knew we had won. It felt amazing.”
Ward’s loose ball layup capped a frenetic final possession. Originally, the Dolphins took over with 30 seconds to go on the clock, and Nice-ville forced two near-turnovers, the second of which turned into a jump-ball possession, and the arrow gave the ball to the Dolphins with seven seconds left, setting up Ward’s heroics.
“It’s those 50-50 balls,” said Niceville head coach Jerome Strutchen. “You have to get them. We had two chances to get the ball down there, and we didn’t. But my hat goes off to them. They played well.”
The buzzer beater gave Mosley a win in a game where they trailed by as many as 14 points late in the fourth quarter. When Niceville’s Devin Vazquez connected on a pair of free throws with one minute, 45 seconds to go in the third, the Eagles led 53-39. That’s when Mosley junior Nat Dixon took over. Dixon, who scored a game-high 29 points, scored nine points in a 15-0 run that gave Mosley a 54-53 lead two minutes into the fourth quarter. The forward hit a three-pointer and connected on back-to-back old-fashioned three-point plays before finish-ing the run with a steal and assist to Brandon Salazar to help turn a 14-point deficit into a one-point lead.
From there, the two teams battled back-and-forth, with Niceville freshman Mitch Morken hitting two free throws to give the Eagles a 61-60 lead with 30 seconds left, setting the scene for the game-winner. Earlier in the final minute, Niceville had missed consecutive free throws on the front end of one-and-one situations, failing to stretch their one-point lead.
“We’ve got to hit our free throws,” said Strutchen, whose team fell to 2-3 in district play. “But the biggest thing is that our guys played to-gether and played with a lot of effort. As a head coach, I can’t complain when they do that. The ball didn’t bounce our way in the end, but I was pleased with the effort.”
For Mosley head coach Chris Martello, the last-second win was a breath of fresh air.
“I’ve been coming here for about a decade and that’s the first time we’ve stolen one like that,” said Martello. “Any time you win at Nice-ville, it’s a great win. They’re so well-coached and they make you work for everything. To win here is a big deal.”
On a night where both teams combined to shoot 54 free throws, 10 of Ward’s 12 points came from the free throw line. The Dolphins con-nected on 23 of their 30 foul shots, while Niceville hit on 17 of 24.
In addition to Dixon’s 29 and Jones’s 12, Turner had nine for the Dolphins (4-10, 2-3).
Nicholas Haynes scored 15 to lead Niceville, while Morken added 10. Korey Amaker and Terrance Jones each scored eight points.
↧
Buzzer beater lifts Mosley past Niceville
↧