The Buckingham boys basketball team left the court in Richmond at the Siegel Center to a standing ovation from its fan base. Back in the locker rooms they dressed while the Knights’ cheerleaders waited outside of their door, many of them overcome with emotion and crying joyfully.
Trailing by 10 points in the third quarter, there wasn’t much about Buckinghams’ Group A quarterfinal game with Middlesex that screamed overtime thriller. But since their fans traveled so far on a Saturday afternoon and had to pay for parking and admission, the Knights put on a show. After coming back to make things tight, Harry Eldridge was able to force overtime. And though the team failed to hit on its last second shot for the win the first period of extra time, Buckingham took care of business in double overtime to punch its ticket to the final four last weekend.
And now one storm is following the other as media outlets across the state are clamoring to find out as much as they about the Knights before they take the court again in Richmond on Friday at 10:30 a.m. against Lebanon. For a small school that doesn’t get a lot of attention, it’s all coming at them very fast.
“We’ve got everyone trying to interview us now,” said Knights coach Russ Gowin. “It’s a little overwhelming for us to be honest. We’re way out in the country and we’re not used to all of this.”
Sure there may be a lot of new faces on this team since the Knights made their last run into the final four two years ago, but those new faces have a lot to do with how Buckingham survived to play another day.
Sophomore’s Caleb White and Tarian Ayers put into outstanding offensive performances on Saturday against the Chargers, and with Taylor Boyers fouled out in the fourth quarter, that’s exactly what this team needed to move one.
While Ayers slashed his way through the paint, White came up big from beyond the arc to score nine of his 18 points on a trio of 3-pointers, all of them at pivotal moments late in the game.
“Caleb and Tarian were absolutely huge for us,” Gowin said. “Tarian did a great job on defense too. And Caleb hit some big time shots and we needed those.”
Now only Lebanon stands in the way for a chance to play for a state title. The Pioneers earned their semifinal bid at the buzzer as Justin Brown’s last second shot fell through to give his team a 1-point win over Radford.
Lebanon brings a pair of quality shooters into the contest in both Brown and Ben Hendrickson, but how they cope with Buckingham’s overall size will go a long way toward determining a winner of this contest. The Knights can rebound and are comfortable crashing the rim, which can make for a long night for undersized teams.
Both sides are coming into the game riding high, so which of these teams was able to move on emotionally after their big win? There’s no way of knowing just yet, but the first quarter of this basketball game should start to shed some light on the answer.
