The dream is over

including a fast break dunk, one of many from the Saints on the morning, increased the Southwood deficit to 24-19.

Will Winer hit 1-2 free throws while Cole Winer scored inside to keep the Knights close, trailing 26-22 with 3:07 left in the first half.

Then, the wheels fell off for Southwood, while Lutheran’s tires pumped up to capacity.

The Saints turned up their defensive pressure to overwhelm the Knights over the final 2:56 of the second quarter, outscoring Southwood, 19-4, to take a 45-26 halftime lead.

“They turned it up a notch,” Perry said. “That defensive pressure – I think we had 17 turnovers in the first half and our goal is less than 10 in a game. To have that many in one half, especially when you are playing a really good team, it’s hard to compete.”

“It felt like we were right there with them but they started getting turnover after turnover,” Southwood senior Jason Oprisek said.

“When we did get a shot, it wasn’t a good one. They just kept getting easy buckets and is just went downhill from there.”

“I think their quickness is something that we have not seen and they were really good at splitting our defense, and obviously, you saw our press wasn’t too effective,” Cole Winer said. “It helped us some but they just played it really well.”

In the second half, Lutheran increased the lead to 52-26 but the Knights showed stopped the Saints’ scoring run with a bucket followed by two free throws from Cole Winer and a three-pointer from Lehner, but Lutheran answered with four quick points. throws wouldn’t have mattered, but it could have made it closer,” he added. “But they are a really good team and they are state champions for a reason.” wouldn’t change too much from the game. they still had life.

Oprisek scored back-to-back baskets but missed opportunities to convert both into three-point plays with missed free throws.

Thirty seconds later Will Winer was fouled, scored, but also missed the free throw, an area that hurt the Knights all morning, as the team shot 15-28 from the charity stripe.

Meanwhile, Lutheran hit 17-29 on the day.

“They shot well from the free throw line,” Perry said of the Saints. “They’re not a very good free throw shooting team, percentage wise, but they were falling for them today.

The Knights continued to battle and tried to get back into the game but Lutheran had an answer for each Southwood score over the final three minutes of the third quarter to take a 77-49 lead, and went on to claim the school’s first basketball state champions.

“We had to continue what got us here. You can’t change the game play. Now I would have (changed) since we saw what we did didn’t work, and we’re not going to do it again,” he said. “We wouldn’t have lost by this much if we sat back and let them shoot threes, except for (Durray) Smith (who hit five 3pointers), but we came to play and we came to win.

Nathan Lehner

“The points we got beat by, free

“We weren’t able to handle them very well,” Perry said. “We haven’t seen that this season. We knew they were going to be aggressive but you can’t replicate it in practice. They were very aggressive, and inside, they were getting to the basket on us. It seemed that everything that could happen was happening for them.”

Perry said he

“We had to play the style that got us here and that’s what we’re comfortable doing,” he added, “I can second-guess everything for probably the rest of my life but we had to do what got us here. Once we got down, you can’t sit back. You have to come back at them and try to get turnovers. The flip side was that we were giving up Cont. on Pg. 7.