Chumley beats the buzzer for win over Lions
EDITOR’S NOTE: Because the look back at each day in Bryant athletic history has been so favorably received during the time when there was no sports during the COVID-19 shutdown, BryantDaily.com will continueposting past stories of Bryant athletics either posted on BryantDaily.com (from 2009 to the present) or published in the Bryant Times (from 1998 to 2008).
By ROB PATRICK
BRYANT TIMES
The last vestiges of hope for the Bryant Hornets putting together a late bid for a spot in the Class AAAAA State Tournament were hanging in the balance. After leading for much of the game, the Hornets had fallen victim to another opponent’s rally. They had overcome the McClellan Lions’ comeback attempt once but, when Julius Harrison knocked down a 15-foot jumper with :14 left, the Hornets found themselves trailing 56-55.
Head coach Mark Smith called a timeout to set things up for the Hornets’ crucial final possession.
“When we had the ball on the previous possession, (McClellan) was in a box-and-one on Jaston (Carter),” Smith noted, referring to his team’s leading scorer. “So, we pretty much knew it was going to take him out of the play. But we had a play that’s set up for kind of a situation like that so, what we did was, we spread the floor. We wanted to see how the defense played it. We had Dwayne (Chumley) with the ball because Dwayne is very dangerous when he has the ball up on top. We set a pick for him and we put shooters in the corners. If (McClellan) collapsed on (Dwayne) he was to kick it out for a shot but then never did collapse, so that allowed him to get to the rim.”
Chumley, as it turned out, drove the right side of the lane, split two McClellan defenders, reached back and banked in an twisting five-foot jumper that gave his team a 57-56 lead.
McClellan coach Chris Threatt called time with :03.7 left to set something up in return for his team. After the two teams deployed with Bryant lining up in a full-court press, Smith took a timeout and changed the type of press.
“We wanted to show them a look that we weren’t going to use,” Smith said. “We wanted to see how they were going to line up then take a timeout. We saw that they were going to set back screens and send the guys up front deep. So we went ‘man’ and we switched on all the screens, tried to contain the ball and not let them get down the floor very quick for a last-second shot.”
Actually, the Lions got a pretty decent look at the end. L.B. Taylor drove to the top of the key where he ran into a double team from Chumley and Nick Dorsey. Both got a hand on the ball but it came right back to Taylor. The knockaway may have been enough to disrupt the rhythm of the Lions’ guard. His 12-foot jumper was short off the front of the rim at the buzzer.
The Hornets had relinquished the lead early in the fourth quarter when Kevin Wilks and Taylor hit back-to-back buckets to put McClellan up 47-45. Bryant’s Benny Elder hit a free throw to cut it to one then Chumley tracked down the rebound on the missed second shot and rifled a pass back to Elder inside. But Harrison swiped the ball and, at the other end, Taylor drove in for what turned into a three-point play.
The Lions had their largest lead of the night, 50-46, with 5:27 left in the game and the Hornets needed a timeout. Again, Bryant used the timeout to good effect, setting up Carter who drilled his fourth 3-pointer of the game, cutting the lead to one.
“That was as big a play as we had,” Smith said.
The Lions went to a spread offense and ate up nearly two minutes of time before turning the ball over. Elder misfired inside but Kyle Lynch rebounded, scored and drew a foul. He completed the clutch three-point play and Bryant was back in the lead, 52-50.
Lynch then combined with B.J. Wood on a steal that led to a basket by Elder and a 4-point edge.
“Kyle did a really good job of getting the ball inside, getting fouled and that three-point play was big,” Smith emphasized.
Carter then rejected a shot by McClellan center Shannon Scribner only to have Harrison corral the deflection and get fouled. He converted once to cut into the margin.
Bryant missed two chances to up the advantage but couldn’t get a shot to fall. Harrison then came through with a game-tying 3 with 1:07 left.
With :31.5 showing, Chamley fed Lynch inside and he was fouled. Lynch converted once to give Bryant the 55-54 lead that Harrison erased seconds later, setting up the thrilling finish.
“The difference in the ballgame was that we didn’t hit that three-minute lull where we just kind of get real stagnant and bad things happen,” Smith mentioned. “It kind of happened early in the game when we got up 14-8 and they came back. But it didn’t happen in the second half. We had a turnover here and there but we didn’t go through that period where we had two or three in a row and miss some shots.
“We handled the pressure a lot better,” he added. “You know, I told the guys before the game, we’ve seen so much pressure the whole season, nothing should affect us now. We should all be immune to it because every game in the Central conference, people are throwing pressure right in your face. I said, ‘We know it’s coming, we’ve seen it before, everybody knows what they’re supposed to do, let’s do it.’ And tonight, we executed. And instead of just breaking the pressure, we hurt them, we scored off of it and that’s a credit to the guys. You can’t tell them where the open area is going to be, you just tell them they’ve got to find it and they did. Benny and Jaston did a great job of finding the open area and Dwayne did a good job of finding people who were open. So did B.J. (Wood) and Drew (Devasher).”
McClellan actually had to give up on the press because of the Hornets’ early success against it. Sparked by the hot shooting of B.J. Wood who scored all 10 of his points in the first half, the Hornets led by as much as 6 on a couple of occasions.
“B.J. came out red hot,” Smith emphasized. “It takes so much pressure off Jaston and Benny and Dwayne when we get scoring from other guys. Kyle stepped up and hit some big shots and Drew didn’t do a lot of scoring but he does so many little things well. He’s really an asset to the team. It was just a great team effort tonight.”
McClellan made a push at the end of the half and took a 28-27 lead with :06 left on a layup by Taylor. But guard Drew Devasher quickly spotted forward Geoff Tucker behind the Lions’ press, hit him with a pass and Tucker, despite some defensive pressure, drove for a buzzer-beating layup that gave the Hornets a 29-28 edge and regained momentum at the half.
“That was huge play,” said Smith. “If you look at it from one standpoint, that wins the ballgame for us. It was heads-up play by both of those guys.”
A jumper by Harrison started the second-half scoring. Devasher, in turn, found Chumley for a layup. Carter knocked down a 16-foot jumper and, after a Taylor miss, buried a trey to put the Hornets back up by 6.
Harrison, however, tied it up at 36 with back-to-back triples.
Smith called timeout and, out of the break, Carter flushed another 3, giving his team a lead they would maintain until McClellan tied it at 43 in the final seconds of the period. Again, however, the Hornets beat the buzzer to regain the lead. Devasher’s inbounds pass set up an easy bucket by Elder to make it 45-43.
“The guys really did what was asked of them,” Smith commented. “They executed real well. We made some adjustments at halftime and the guys did a good job executing them. We had been giving up too many offensive rebounds. We talked to the guys about winding up underneath the rim trying to get rebound position. But we rebounded a little better in the second half and I think it was because the guys were starting to block out more outside the edge of the lane instead of underneath the rim.”
Carter finished with 14 points to go with Elder’s 11 and Wood’s 10. Chumley’s game-winner gave him 8 and Lynch had 6 including 4-of-5 free throws.
Scribner led McClellan with 19 points but 15 of those came in the second half when he was hitting the offensive boards. And the Lions stopped looking for him down the stretch. Harrison finished with 16, Taylor 11.
