The Greenwood girls celebrate after winning a wild 59-57 game at Whiteland on Friday evening.
Rob Baker | For the Daily Journal
Just when you thought you’d seen it all, Greenwood’s girls basketball team found a completely incomprehensible way to snap its four-game losing skid.
Down by four with 9.2 seconds remaining, the Woodmen staged a miraculous comeback Friday to steal a 59-57 triumph in front of a stunned Whiteland crowd.
After Keyara Johnson’s 3-pointer with 2.5 seconds left gave the Woodmen (5-12, 2-3 Mid-State Conference) a flicker of hope, senior Charlee Mayo intercepted the inbounds pass and was fouled shooting a 3-pointer with three tenths of a second on the clock. She calmly hit all three to lift her team to the win.
“We shoot 100 free throws at the beginning of each practice, so I felt pretty solid once I got fouled,” Mayo said. “Obviously it’s nerve-wracking, because the team is depending on me to make these to win, but my team had faith in me, I had faith in myself and my coaches had faith in me.”
In the second half of the doubleheader, Whiteland’s boys used a dominating third quarter to break open a close game and pick up a 58-45 victory.
The Woodmen girls scored the first five points of the evening before the Warriors responded with nine straight to take a lead that held up until the final minute of the opening period, when Johnson hit a 3-pointer and followed with a steal and layup to tie the game at 16-16. Gwen Higdon responded with a go-ahead 3 for the Warriors, then added a buzzer-beater off a loose ball to put her team up 21-17 after one.
Greenwood opened the second quarter going down low to Emma Gardner, with the junior scoring the team’s first eight points of the second to even the score again at 25-25. The last two of Gardner’s four buckets started a 9-0 spurt that left the Woodmen up 30-25 after a Breanna Pierce 3 with 3:43 to go in the half. The visitors took a 36-30 advantage into the intermission.
Whiteland, though, opened the third period on the attack, with a 3-pointer and two driving layups by Higdon keying an 8-0 run that put the host squad back on top, 42-39. The quarter ended with a rapid back-and-forth exchange of baskets that resulted in three straight lead changes, the last coming when Johnson’s layup gave Greenwood a 47-46 edge. That lead was short-lived, as Sukhman Bains knocked down a 3 and Sophia Dyer scored on the low block to put the Warriors back in front, 51-47, with 6:45 remaining in the game.
Greenwood’s comeback opportunities were limited for much of the final quarter, as four Dyer offensive rebounds helped keep the ball at Whiteland’s end for long stretches, but layups by Johnson and Eliana Anderson cut the deficit to one, and Anderson fed Isabelle Reynolds for a short go-ahead jumper with 1:01 to go.
Higdon came right back the other way and gave Whiteland the lead with 52.1 seconds on the clock, and free throws from Bains and Samantha Roadruck created a seemingly safe 57-53 cushion before all hell broke loose in the final seconds.
“We were hustling tonight,” Greenwood coach Jenny Finora said. “We were gritty. That’s a lot of things we’ve been wanting to do all year long, and we just did them tonight. We wanted it; we were hungry.”
Johnson had 19 points to lead the Woodmen, followed by 10 from Gardner and eight from Reynolds. Higdon finished with a game-high 22 for the Warriors (8-9, 1-3), with Bains and Dyer contributing 14 apiece.
The boys contest was similarly close for a half, with seven ties and nine lead changes in the opening 16 minutes before Whiteland (7-5, 2-1) held Greenwood without a field goal for the entire third quarter to turn a 22-21 halftime deficit into a 38-25 lead. Akol Akol opened the period with a go-ahead 3 to start a nine-point spurt, and after the Woodmen ended the drought with a pair of foul shots, Jazz Banwait converted an and-one at the other end to make it 33-24 with 4:14 left. The margin was 38-25 going into the fourth and Greenwood (3-8, 0-3) didn’t get any closer than 10 the rest of the way.
Banwait paced a balanced Whiteland effort with 16 points, while Ethan Edwards finished with 15 and Wiatt McLaughlin added 11. Jake Mosemann had 14 points and Isaac O’Neal 13 for the Woodmen, who committed the bulk of their 18 turnovers in the second half.
Whiteland coach Nate Cangany was pleased with how his team, which was missing a double-figure scorer in injured guard Gavin Stubbe, picked up its play in the second half after a rocky offensive start. He credited Spencer Gillespie for stepping up in Stubbe’s absence.
“Spencer played really well, both on offense and defense,” Cangany said. “It’s the type of game that we want to play, and we were able to get it in the second half.”
