After not scoring all game Grayson County senior Hunter Tomes took one dribble and then jump-stopped his way into the lane and scored his lone points in at the buzzer, denying Trinity (Whitesville) of its first 12th District Championship since 2004 with a 58-56 win.
“It’s a heartbreaker,” Head Coach Nathan West said. “It’s unfortunate. We’ve had a lot of those. We had one last year with Henderson. The year before that we got put in overtime in the All-A Championship with Owensboro Catholic with a shot like that. Part of that is just growing and learning how to handle those situations.”
The Raiders had done what they wanted to defensively during that final possession, which was to not let junior River Blanton get the last shot for the Cougars.
“We wanted to keep it out of Blanton’s hands, which he’d been killing us all night,” West said. “It was when we got tired. We did a good job on him in the first half.
He had struggled in the first half, while junior Landon Huff scored 10 of his team-leading 16 points to give the Raiders a 25-22 lead at halftime. However, Blanton came out of the locker room guns blazing, rattling off 12 points in the third to help them cut their deficit to 43-38 going into the fourth.
Blanton had gotten seven in the fourth as well, helping spark Grayson County’s offense as they knotted things up at 56-56 with 22.3 seconds left on the clock. Coming out of a Cougars timeout Tomes got the ball reversed to him on the left wing and the rest was history and students stormed the court.
Blanton led all scorers with 27 points, serving as one of two Cougars to finish in double figures. West felt that Blaton had a strong night, but that in the end the Raiders beat themselves.
“He played really well, but other than that I think we just shot ourselves in the foot,” West said. “I think we missed big free throws down the stretch, we got sped up by their pressure, we missed a lot of key blockouts for him to get fouled or put the ball back… Those little details are the difference between winning and losing.”
Despite the loss, Trinity had already secured its spot in the 3rd Region Tournament for the first time since 2009. With the mantra of making history adopted by the Raiders this year, West and company are still thrilled to see another day and try to give them their first regional win in program history.
“There’s teams that are alive that we’ve beaten and that we can match up with on the draw,” West said. “Depending on the draw and how we play, it’s just kind of getting them to understand we can’t skip steps in the process. A lot of times you gotta suffer these tough ones to get somewhere bigger.”
Trinity will find out who they are matched up with in less than 24 hours, as the 3rd Region draw is set for 9:30 a.m. on Saturday.
