SHERBURNE – The first matchup between the Marauders and the Holland Patent Golden Knights came down to three points, one that fell in favor of Holland Patent. Monday night’s second meeting between the two teams provided the fans in the gym an exciting game until the last two seconds of the game...literally.
With just under 20 seconds remaining in the game, Sherburne-Earlville’s Hunter Lane kicked the ball ahead to a wide open Dawson Lagoe, who finished and put the Marauders up one.
Holland Patent took the ball following the Lagoe bucket over half and called a timeout.
During the timeout, Sherburne-Earlville’s head coach Kevin Vibbard switched up his defense with hopes of keeping the Golden Knights’ Josh Ernst away from the rim.
In doing so, Holland Patent’s D.J. Harter got a good look from deep behind the three-point line and drained it, leaving just 2.6 seconds left on the clock.
Following a Marauder timeout, Gabe Irwin took the ball out of bounds, looking to go deep to a streaking Lane down the court. But the ball was intercepted by the Golden Knights, allowing the team to remain undefeated in the league after the one point win.
Size wise, these two teams were pretty evenly matched.
At the start of the game, Lane went up against three of Holland Patent’s bigs to get the first bucket of the game for the Marauders. Next two trips down the court led to Irwin hitting a 15-foot pull-up jumper and a three-pointer from Tyler Bigford, giving the home team a 8-6 lead.
Getting out in transition, Irwin had a great no-look pass to Lane, extending the Sherburne-Earlville lead to five with 2:53 left in the first. Later in the quarter, Lagoe finished strong to give the Marauders a 13-6 advantage.
Finally putting an end to the S-E run, Harter hit his second three of the game. Going on a small scoring spurt of their own to send the quarter trailing by two.
After Nick Thurston’s basket at 6:46, Sherburne-Earlville went on a scoring drought until 3:32 remaining in the second.
The Golden Knights played a 1-3-1 defense where their forward was playing the top. When a Marauders’ shot went up, that player took off down the court and teammates threw the long ball. This led to the first Holland Patent lead of the game. With the same action happening on back-to-back possessions, the Marauders found themselves down by four.
Cutting it back down to two was S-E’s Sylas Swingle with a strong finish at the rim.
The grit and grind by the scrappy Marauders weren’t about to go away quietly. Nearly every loose ball saw one Sherburne-Earlville player on the floor, fighting for every possession.
However, Holland Patent took a 28-27 lead into the intermission after their second buzzer-beater in just as many quarters.
The Golden Knights came out of the break with 4-0 run.
But Irwin attacked the rim for his third field goal of the game to make it 4-2 to start the third. However Holland Patent scored two more baskets while S-E suffered their second three minute scoring drought of the game.
