Columbus North’s Sam King looks to pass the ball around Center Grove’s Jordan Vaughns during a game in Memorial Gymnasium at Columbus North High School.
Tommy Walker | For The Republic
Columbus North seniors Sam King and Rhett Harmon didn’t want to lose their final game in Memorial Gym, so with the Bull Dogs trailing Center Grove by eight points with 6 minutes remaining, they went to work.
Harmon hit a 3-pointer to spark an 11-0 run, and North scored 13 of the game’s final 15 points to close the regular season with a 40-37 victory.
“I just think it was our mental toughness,” said King, who scored five of his game-high 13 points during the run. “We saw that they were kind of getting lax a little bit. They had a pretty comfortable lead in the fourth quarter, and usually when teams get that, they think they have it in the bag. But we kept fighting. We knew it was going to be our last game here, so we didn’t give up.”
The Trojans (10-12) led 35-27 before Harmon’s 3-pointer from the right corner cut it to five with 5 1/2 minutes remaining. A three-point play by Cooper Horn trimmed the margin to two, and King tied it with a basket at the 4:22 mark.
King added a free throw, then two more free throws to give the Bull Dogs (16-7) a 38-35 lead with 2:26 left. Center Grove got a basket from Marcus Ankney with 1:58 remaining to cut the lead to one. Then, with North in a delay offense, the Trojans got a steal, but turned it over.
Luke Harmon converted a one-and-one for the Bull Dogs with 33 seconds left to push the lead to three. Center Grove turned it over with 7 seconds left, but still had a chance after Luke Harmon missed the front end of a one-and-one with 6.2 seconds remaining. But Ankney’s 3-pointer from the top of the key was off the mark, and King grabbed the rebound as the buzzer sounded.
“We just showed incredible mental toughness,” said Paul Ferguson, who picked up his 100th win as North coach. “We stuck with our game plan, and I thought down the stretch there, we just executed really well against a very good defensive team.”
The finish capped a defensive battle in which neither team led by more than six points through the first three quarters. North led 21-19 at halftime, but the Trojans opened the second half on a 10-2 run to take a 29-23 lead.
Horn finished with nine points for the Bull Dogs, who snapped a two-game losing streak heading into next week’s Martinsville Sectional.
“It’s big for our confidence,” Ferguson said. “I think we showed that we can come out and compete with an excellent team, and when we face some adversity, we can bounce back. Just a credit to our guys. They showed a lot of mental toughness in a very physical basketball game, and we found a way to get it done.”
The win gives not only King and Harmon a win in their final home games, but also fellow seniors Carson Dibble and Ben Kleinhenz.
“It’s really nice,” King said. “One of my goals this week was to win my last game here, and to do it against Center Grove, which is kind of our rival because a lot of my friends are football players and they always lose to Center Grove. Just to have them in the student section cheering us on against them means so much.”
