Friday night’s boys basketball tilt between Franklin and Whiteland was a battle of wills featuring nine ties and seven lead changes — most of them late.
The last one put the finishing touches on a classic between the two county rivals.
Drew Byerly, who scored 19 of his game-high 32 points in the fourth quarter and overtime, bulled through the lane for the decisive three-point play with 4.9 seconds remaining in the extra frame to lift the host Grizzly Cubs to a 71-68 victory in a battle of two clubs looking for their first Mid-State Conference win.
"It wasn’t really a set play or anything," Byerly said. "It was just kind of what ended up playing out. It was a good team win, though. Everybody contributed; I was proud of the guys."
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The decisive bucket punctuated a riveting one-on-one battle down the stretch between Byerly, who had Franklin’s first 10 overtime points, and Whiteland junior Logan Willoughby, who had all of his team’s seven points over the final four minutes.
Willoughby had given Whiteland a 67-66 edge when he converted a drive with 42 seconds remaining, and the Grizzly Cubs countered by repeatedly trying to get the ball to Byerly in the post. When the Warriors doubled or tripled him each time, the senior instead came out to the right wing and drove through the middle, powering the ball in and bringing the home crowd to its feet.
"He’s just a really good player," Whiteland coach Nate Cangany said of Byerly. "He beat us not only with his points, but early in the game, when we were rotating around trying to do a good job on him, (Damon) Dickey hit a few 3s. He’s just such a presence on the floor."
Willoughby, who finished with 26 points, drew a foul with 1.4 seconds to go, but his second shot rimmed out and was rebounded by Thomas Crow, who tacked on two free throws to seal it for Franklin (5-6, 1-3).
A Willoughby three-point play with 11.8 seconds left in the third put the Warriors in front, 47-46, going into the final quarter. But Byerly returned the favor with an and-one and then scored on three straight high-low dumps from Crow, putting Franklin seemingly back in control at 55-49 with 4:10 left.
Whiteland turned a Kyson Jones steal into a Jacob Prellis layup, chopping the deficit to 57-55 heading into the final minute. Baskets by Sullivan and Willoughby kept the Warriors within a possession before a baseline drive by Quinten Gillespie with half a second remaining in regulation evened the score at 61-61.
The defeat was a tough one to swallow for the Warriors (3-10, 0-4), who have now dropped five in a row overall and have lost their four conference games by an average of less than five.
"I get tired of saying it, because I want it to not be the case, but we’re still young," Cangany said. "And we’re getting better; if you watch Tuesday’s game to tonight, we did a much better job on both ends."
Whiteland built an early six-point lead, the biggest that either team had all night, behind the hot shooting of Willoughby and Sullivan, who combined for 16 first-quarter points, before the Grizzly Cubs clawed back to even it up at 16-16 late in the period on a Dickey 3-pointer.
Dickey hit two more 3s and Franklin put together a 9-2 run late in the second quarter to take a five-point lead before settling for a 32-29 advantage at the break.
Sullivan, playing through an illness, finished with 20 points for Whiteland, which got seven points from Kyson Jones. Dickey had 16 for the Grizzly Cubs before fouling out, with freshman John Shepard contributing eight. Byerly finished with 11 rebounds to lead all players.
