STARKVILLE — Any bitterly contested overtime defeat usually leaves a basketball coach lamenting one missed shot on offense or one made basket allowed on defense.
Starkville High School boys basketball coach Greg Carter didn’t long for one more shot Friday night. He wanted another rebound.
“We had everything we wanted all night, but we couldn’t get one last defensive stop,” Carter said. “We allowed offensive rebound after offensive rebound after offensive rebound. If we had one more rebound, that’s a win. That is what makes this incredibly tough.”
The best game of the opening day of the Travis Outlaw Slam Dunk at the Hump was the final one. Southwind High of Memphis, Tennessee, needed two overtimes before persevering to post a 75-72 double overtime victory at Humphrey Coliseum.
“We won an overtime game against Whitney Young of Chicago earlier this season,” Southwind coach Paul Edwards said. “I think that really prepared us to win this game. We had been right there at the crossroads in that game several times. The same thing happened here. It was a tremendous game. We just had to keep battling and battling and battling.”
Southwind (10-1) entered the game averaging 80 points per game. The Jaguars faced a tall task against the Yellow Jackets’ defensive pressure.
“Their speed and length really caused us some problems,” Southwind senior guard Donte Dorsey said. “We just had to stay true to what we are doing. We were able to get out and run some, but not as much as we like to. We knew we were playing a really good team. We just had to stay patient and do the things we needed to do.”
Starkville (8-3) built a 14-3 lead. Southwind finally got its offense in gear and showed signs of the team that scored 92 points in a win last week. Still, the Yellow Jackets held some type of lead throughout the first half, including a 33-30 edge at halftime
“We played extremely well in the first half,” Carter said. “We controlled the tempo and kept things going the way we wanted them to go. In the second half, they outfought us for loose balls and for offensive rebounds. We just needed one more stop. We could force the contested shot or get the free throw misses, but we couldn’t get the end result of getting the ball back.”
Neither team enjoyed any separation in a highly entertaining second half.
Southwind built a 54-47 lead after an 11-3 run. The Jaguars forced three open-court turnovers during that run.
Starkville rode stellar free throw shooting from Nick Deloach and Tyson Carter into overtime. Carter drained a 3-pointer in the closing seconds of regulation to force overtime.
“We weren’t real smart down the stretch,” Dorsey said. “We sent them to the line twice when we were ahead. We knew in overtime we had to make up for it.”
While Starkville used its full-court pressure to perfection to reel off a game-tying 12-5 run in the final four minutes of regulation, the comeback could have happened more quickly.
Three times Southwind missed the second free throw of a two-shot attempt but secured the offensive rebound.
“The second chances killed us,” Carter said. “Even on the possessions where they didn’t score on the second chance, they still killed us.”
Southwind appeared to have righted the ship and was in good standing in the first overtime until a bizarre sequence of events.
With 1 minute, 43 seconds left in the extra period, Kendall Edwards drew his fifth personal foul. With his team leading 65-61, coach Edwards waited the maximum amount of time given to make a substitution. When the horn sounded, the coach asked for a timeout but was given a technical instead.
Starkville hit half of the two free throws for the personal foul and both free throws for the technical. Deloach then hit 1 of 2 free throws on the offensive possession.
Southwind then held 90 seconds for the final shot that missed. It also failed to convert two putbacks, so the four-point play by Starkville forced the second overtime.
In that overtime, Southwind proved too much with a back-breaking 3-pointer followed by a steal and layup by Dorsey that sealed the deal in the final half-minute.
Tyson Carter led Starkville with 28 points, while Deloach and Keith Harris each had 13 points.
Dorsey led Southwind with 23 points, while Tyler Brewer added 18 points and Kevin Cheatham had 16.
“You play games like this for the lessons we learned tonight,” Carter said. “You just have to play a little harder and a little better when the game is on the line. We will regroup and be even better next time out.”
Follow Scott Walters on Twitter @dispatchscott
Scott was sports editor for The Dispatch.
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