Thursday, Jan. 24 2013 1:58PM
Lucky Lock
Tigers get last second victory over Blue Springs
By Ryan Weaver
Special to the Journal
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ReprintCall it luck. Call it skill. Call it a circus shot, a miracle, unbelievable. Call it whatever. All that matters is the shot went in.
With about five seconds left and Lee’s Summit trailing 61-60 Jan. 22 to Blue Springs, the ball bounced off the rim to left. Drew Lock grabbed the rebound and with his back to the basket, threw the ball over his head for it to kiss off the glass, onto the rim and down the bottom of the net, all without even looking at the basket.
“You know, I do not practice behind-the-head, no-look (shots),” Lock said. “I had a little bit of luck on that one.”
Well, he got a look at the basket when he turned to see if it went in. It did, and the Tigers won 62-61.
“I didn’t know what would happen (when Lock went up), but I was thankful that it went in,” Tiger coach Keith Miller said. “You hear a lot that if you don’t shoot it, it can’t go in. He kept at it and the basketball gods were on our side this time and somehow it rolled in. It goes to show…that if you keep working and you work hard, sometimes you get lucky, and I felt that’s what happened for us.”
Lock scored the final 12 points for the Tigers, a stat that both Lock and Miller showed some surprise to upon hearing.
“I had no idea that’s what I did,” Lock said. “I was trying to get us back in the game and help us win the game.”
Of his 20 points, Lock scored 16 of them in the second half.
The Tigers, now 7-8, trailed 57-47 before Dan McElroy canned a 3-pointer at the 4:20 mark to cut the lead to seven. From there, it was pressure defense and Lock converting on offense. The defense kept Blue Springs out of rhythm most of the night and it held the Wildcats to just two points in the final three minutes.
With 16 seconds left, Walter Sorrells missed the front end of a one-and-one for the Wildcats and gave the Tigers a chance for the win. The Wildcats didn’t help themselves after Lock’s shot either, stepping on the line trying to inbound the ball to seal the victory for Lee’s Summit.
To open the game, the Tigers went up 11-4, only to see their fortunes reversed by halftime, down 32-24.
Streaky shooting kept the Tigers in the game in the third quarter. Grant Robbins knocked down two from behind the arc to pull within 38-33. Robbins finished with 11 points on the night.
Then McElroy scored five of the Tigers’ next six buckets and assisted on the other. A shot from distance tied the game at 42 with 2:15 left in the third quarter and another shot just inside the arc gave the Tigers a 47-46 lead in the final minute of the frame.
“Dan’s lethal. He’s kind of an assassin,” Miller said. “He can shoot the ball like nobody’s business, especially if he’s wide open. Rarely does he miss two or three shots in a row, which he did there in the fourth quarter, but when Dan gets going, he’s tough to stop. And when Drew gets going, those two guys can really shoot the ball. It makes us really dangerous as a team.”
The Tigers went scoreless in the fourth quarter until the 4:20 mark, when McElroy scored his 17th point. Lock did the rest.
