In a very bittersweet loss, our Mustangs earned some well-deserved respect in the Bluegrass-Buckeye Charity Classic on Sunday afternoon, going toe-to-toe with the GCL powerhouse LaSalle Lancers for four quarters of basketball and overtime before running out of gas late, allowing the Lancers to eek out a 55-52 overtime win.
The Mustangs trailed 15-13 after a quarter, but knotted the score at 25 at the half. We led by five at 38-33 after three periods and then went cold for the first half of the fourth period allowing the Lancers to tie the game at 39 and even take a 46-43 lead
before being forced into overtime, tied at 46. Killer three point goals by LaSalle's Tony Schmidt and Sean Hennesy proved the difference in OT.
Even after seeing this scene repeated over and over throughout the years it still never ceases to amaze me at how competitive our program is with the big guys. Be it playing Elder in their pit, CovCath at home or on the road, beating up on LexCath at all levels, toppling Oak Hills in the Cintas Center, and on and on and on our guys just somehow always manage to either win or put up a great fight. Today in the Bluegrass-Buckeye Charity Classic it was business as usual. There we were coming down the stretch with Cincinnati LaSalle, one of the top teams in the city tied at 46 with a chance to win the game.
It was almost as if we expected Brad Seiter's desperation shot at the buzzer to go in - because that is what we have come to expect.. If it were a fairy tale it would have, but this was reality and the shot came up short with the Mustangs being outscored in overtime, allowing the Lancers to dodge the Mustang bullet.
Some years ago on a Monday night in December another Seiter launched a similar shot that hit paydirt and lauched this program into the top level of competiton paving the way for games such as today when we would play LaSalle, or Edler, or Oak Hills, or LexCath.....
That night before the game I predicted to principal Tom Seither that the Mustangs would pitch a big one vs Northern Kentucky's top ranked Covington Catholic Colonels. Tom mused that we would have to get over the intimidation factor of playing CovCath before we could ever succeed in beating them. Well, we weren't intimidated then and we're still not intimidated now in big ballgames. Today in the Bluegrass-Buckeye Classic's most exciting ballgame, the Brossart Mustangs traded baskets with the Lancers throughout the first period and trailed by 2 at the quarter stop 15-13 as Troy Cooper established his dominance in the paint by scoring six of our thirteen points. Brossart wouldn't back down in the second quarter and managed to tie the event at 25 as five different Mustangs hung numbers on the board during the period. The Mustangs outplayed their more famous opponents in the third quarter, putting up 13 points to the 8 mustered by the Lancers. Neither team would score for the first three minutes of the the fourth period when LaSalle cracked the ice and outscored the home team 6-1 to knot the contest at 39 with 3:49 to play and then go ahead 46-43 with 2:15 left in the game. The Mustangs would answer the challange, knot the score at 46 and had the ball with sixteen seconds when it was pounded inside to Troy Cooper who misfired while under intense defensive pressure. LaSalle would misshandle the ball on thier final possession giving the Stangs a chance at last second heroics but Brad's shot came up short and the Lancers prevailed in overtime 55-52.
The question being bantered about on the night of the game is - Would LaSalle win the 10th. I think we all know the answer to that question which makes it all that much more important for this team to continue to jell and be playing even better yet when the big fish need to be fried, such as All "A" State time and post-season play.
Box Score Mustangs: Kidney 1-0-4/4-6, Seiter 3-0-0/0-6,
Franzen 0-0-2/2-2, Niemeyer 0-0-2/2-2, Lubbers 3-0-0/0-6,
Uebel 2-3-1/4-14, Cooper 7-0-2/3-16
Box Score Lancers: Schmidt 1-1-2/2-7, McElroy 4-0-1/2-9,
Austin 4-0-0/0-8, Hennessy 2-2-0/1-10, Harris 2-1-0/3-7,
Martin 4-0-0/0-8, Jones 1-1-0/0-5
Totals Mustangs: 16-3-10/16-52 3-2 1-1
Totals Lancers: 18-5- 2/8 -55 |
