Nothing in baseball can match an ace pitcher, not even the weight of history.
It wasn’t exactly the Gettysburg Address. In fact, Josh Eggold’s message to his Concordia Cadets, as they prepared to head out for overtime Friday night, consisted of about eight starkly unvarnished words.
“I told them, ‘We’re both tired and this is our home court,’ ” he said.
Eloquent enough.
The weary Cadets dragged themselves onto the floor to face the equally weary Northrop Bruins, and when it was finished it was the seventh-ranked Bruins who got put to sleep. Leading by two with a minute left in overtime, Concordia scored the last seven points, all of them at the free-throw line, and knocked out the Bruins 63-54 in front of a jammed house at Concordia.
It was a case of mind over matter and victory over themselves as much as anything for the Cadets, who overcame 16 second-half turnovers and used a triangle-and-two defense in the second half to slow Northrop star Bryson Scott, who finished with a game-high 27 points but took just six of his 24 shots in the fourth quarter and overtime.
“It was a testament to our kids’ resilience to get this victory tonight,” Eggold said.
The heroes for Concordia included 6-foot-6 center Brian Gremaux, who scored 15 of his team-high 21 points in the fourth quarter and overtime and helped Concordia control the defensive glass in the second half, and forward Marq Rogers, who scored 10 of his 17 in the second half. Thomas Starks chipped in with 13, including the go-ahead bucket 32 seconds into overtime that launched Concordia’s decisive 7-0 run to open the extra session.
Northrop went on a 12-2 tear across the last three minutes of the first quarter and first 1:18 of the second to go in front 19-10, and it looked good for the Bruins.
But Concordia scored the next nine points and 11 of the last 13 of the first half, and at the break the game was tied at 21.
“Being tied at halftime was a huge victory for us, because then we could come back with the triangle-and-two in the second half,” Eggold said. “We were trying to hold off on it until the second half.”
The Cadets opened the second half with an 8-2 run to take a 29-23 lead, but Bryson Scott led the Bruins back. His three-pointer and Brenton Scott’s layup off a steal tied it again at 32 with 2:26 to play in the third, and neither team led by more than three the rest of regulation.
Along the way, Bryson Scott’s reverse layup with 5:45 to play in regulation broke Josh Gaines’ school career scoring record – the highlight of the night, it turned out, for the Bruins.
