High School Sports: Century Boys Advance to Tourney Championship

The boys advance to the finals of the sixth annual Knights Holiday Hoops Classic with a hard fought win over Reservoir 63-60.

came up short in the opening varsity game of the tournament, 57-44 to Boys Latin.

The Lions will play Reservoir at 6 p.m. in the consolidation game while the Knights will take on Boys Latin at 7:30.

The Knights behind the foul shooting of senior Michael Austin were able to hold on to beat the Gators. At one point, Century held an 11 point lead, but Reservoir came back to take the lead with 4:11 left in the game.

The Gators were able to expand the lead to five points with 1:37 left in the contest. Mitch Sleight and Chris Tan both hit two foul shots to get the Knights to within two points 60-58.

That’s when Austin took over. He went to the foul line three times and hit five of six foul shots to give Century the win.

Reservoir had one chance to score but missed on a drive to the basket and Austin came up with the miss and was fouled for his last trip to the foul line with 16 seconds left.

"It is certainly nice to have those type of games," said Century coach George Wunder. "We have been fortunate enough when we have had some decent enough leads going into the fourth quarter. To be challenged like this in the fourth quarter should help us down the road. The way our guys responded tonight especially Mike Austin, with hitting some big foul shots was great to see."

Tan paced the victors with 18 points, while Austin had 16. Sleight and Evan Fritsche were also in double figures with 11 points each. Brad MacFee rounded out the scoring with seven points.

The Gators were led by Joey Usher with 18 points and teammate Cody Toler had 11.

Century is 7-0 overall for the season.

"I have a lot of respect for them (Reservoir). They played well defensively. They have some great kids that can go out there and score. They are well coached. It was just a good basketball game. We were fortunate enough to come with a win," said Wunder.

Liberty kept up with Boys Latin for the first half as they were down 30-27 at halftime. They were outscored 27-17 in the second half.

"When we were running the offense, we were running  though stuff we were doing pretty well," said Liberty coach Jay Seaborg. "When we started going one-on-one it kind of broke down. We have to finish shots. If we cut off their fast breaks and not put them on the foul line it would have been a different game. So they are good foul shooters and they must have picked up 15 or 16 points from the foul line and  that is the diffence in the game right there.

"We have to do a better job of attacking the basket and a better job of running the offense and being patience waiting for stuff to open up." 

Chad Barcikowski led Liberty with 15 points in the first half, but only had three in the second half to finish with 18 points. No other Lion was in double figures. Colin Orf was next for the Lions with six points followed by Shane Sweeney and Greg Pickett with five points, JC Farley had four and Kyle Farson and Rase Burke each had three points.

Colin Heacock topped the Lakers with 16 points while Casey Rees had 14 and Matt Rees had 10 points.

"We are still in the process of getting this thing together. We have stretches were we play really well and we have stretches were we don’t. We are getting there. We have a lot of guys that moved up from jv. It doesn’t come easy. You just can’t walk on the court and all of sudden it’s a finished product," said Seaborg.

The Lions are 1-6 for the season.