Friday night, the rain was pouring down outside Patrick Henry High School.
Inside the PH gym, several droughts took place.
Escaping a potential game winning shot by the Patriots in the final seconds, Cave Spring managed to pull out the 35-34 River Ridge District squeaker over the Patriots.
“We definitely gutted this one out,” Cave Spring head coach Jacob Gruse noted outside the Knights’ locker room. “It’s a win and our guys had a lot of guts out there. At the end we got the stop we needed. Overall I thought we played tremendous defense and we did a good job scouting them that allowed us to execute our defense. PH played well and gave us fits. Jack (PH head coach Jack Esworthy) had his team ready to play.”
The game quickly went to a low-scoring contest after the two teams played to a 14-14 stalemate in the first quarter, despite Cave Spring coming up short on its first five possessions to start the game.
Patrick Henry hurt itself in the second quarter, scoring only 5 points that allowed the Knights to go to the break up 24-19.
Most of the first half damage by Cave Spring came via backdoor breaks resulting from lapses in the Patriots’ otherwise stingy, physical defense.
The main thorn from the Cave Spring backdoor rolls came from Knight senior Zach Shannon, who finished with 9 points, seven in the first half.
“PH is physical and we were expecting it and prepared for it,” Shannon noted. “I thought they played some pretty good defense.”
Cave Spring more than returned the favor of a scoring drought in the third quarter, scoring only three points that allowed PH to go to the final 8 minutes up 30-27. The Knights suffered 20 turnovers in the game.
“I’d like to say we played good defense, but Cave Spring backdoored us time after time early in the game,” Eswortrhy pointed out. “Fortunately, it stayed close because they didn’t make shots. They got the shots and missed, we just couldn’t get good shots. It hurts when you have 17 turnovers like we did tonight”
The Knights scored the first six points of the fourth quarter on a Jake Furrow runner, a pair of free throws by senior Mason Reyer and a Reyer breakaway off a steal that put Cave Spring up 33-30. Reyer had a team-high 11 points for the Knights.
PH was down 35-34 with two minutes left, but neither team could find the twine the rest of the way.
Patrick Henry had a final opportunity in the last 45 seconds after forcing a Knight turnover. The Patriots misfired from the field, but gathered the rebound and called time out with 22.4 seconds left.
The Knights hadn’t committed a foul in the second half to that point, and with six fouls to give before putting PH on the line, Cave Spring used their first with 10.9 seconds to go.
That forced PH’s hand, and Esworthy called for a high lob from the Patriot sideline into the paint where 6-foot-6 Quishon Calfee made the catch but could not connect. PH got one last desperation shot in the paint from junior Dom Joyce off the Calfee miss, but it rolled off the rim and Cave Spring ran out the clock on an inbounds pass with 0.8 seconds on the clock. It left PH with the final drought of only 4 points in the fourth quarter.
“We got exactly what we wanted at the end,” Esworthy said. “We didn’t have the option of going with a drive, we had to go right inside. It just rolled off.”
“i think we got a little anxious and excited when PH came back in the third quarter to take the lead,” Gruse admitted. “But, in the end we settled down to get the win.”
Senior Terrell Anderson led the PH scoring with a game-high 13 points.
Bill Turner
