Four Second Miracle

The Spartan basketball team defeats the Chaparral Wolverines in buzzer beater fashion.

Photo by Mia Nogueira

On Tuesday, December 14th, the Spartan Basketball team had a battle of epic proportions on pack-the-house night against a talented 5A Chaparral team, and won with a nail biting finish of 64-62.

With a gym packed full of cheering students and parents, the team certainly did not disappoint their loyal fan base and produced a fantastic game. In the first quarter, the Spartans seemed unstoppable and quickly took control of the tempo and pace of the game. Seniors Wesley Price and Miles McIntosh were relentless in the first half, both driving the ball and taking outside 3’s with perfection against the Wolverines. The Spartans were also dominant on the other side of the court, and the “swat team” made up of Nate Brewer and Eric Andres combined for five blocked shots in the first half alone, and a total of 12 for the game. As the buzzer rang for the end of the first half, the Spartans were up 40-26.

With the second half, came a change of pace for the game. The Spartans still led for majority of the half, but were slowed down by several give-aways and found themselves in foul trouble, putting the Chaparral shooters on the free throw line on many occasions. With these mistakes, the team unfortunately let the Wolves close in on their lead, and were  down by one point with less than a minute to go on the clock. As the final seconds ticked away, all hope seemed lost until Senior Ian Melnicoe came up with a big play and forced the Chaparral defender out of bounds to give the Spartans the ball with four seconds on the clock. “I knew it was time for a big play, so I went up for the rebound and it was just fortunate that the guy was forced to come down with it out of bounds,” said Melnicoe.

As Head Coach Grant Laman called a timeout and devised a play that would hopefully win the game, everyone could sense the anticipation in the crowd and the hope that the team would somehow pull a miracle and win. With four seconds on the clock, the ball was in the hands of Senior leader Ian Melnicoe, who in-bounded the ball to shooter Jordan Roland at the base line, who quickly turned and fired a shot on a hope and a prayer at the basket right at the buzzer. The ball hit the rim and slowly spun around and around toying with the idea of sinking through the net and – in the end – propelling the Spartans to victory. The crowd fell silent as anticipation grew, but the silence was sharply broken when the ball triumphantly sank through the basket and the fans broke into a wild craze of excitement and victory. The crowd rushed the court to celebrate with an overjoyed team and in the midst of all the celebrating, the scoreboard read a glorious final score of 64-62.

The team looks to keep their winning roll going as they take on D’Evelyn High School away on Thursday, December 16^th at 7:00 pm.

Here’s a video of the fantastic final four seconds:

[flashvideo file=http://tjcomputermagnet.com/video/endofgame.flv /]