After the Warhill Lions and the Jamestown Eagles took their tug-of-war matchup Friday night down to the last seconds, the Eagles’ Logan Evans netted the game-winning basket with 2.1 seconds left on the clock.
Evans took the pass from George Williams, open to toss in a layup to give the Eagles a 68-67 lead over their crosstown rivals.
“We were just running our normal offense,” said Evans, who tied teammate Anthony Redcross with 16 points to lead the Eagles. “Coach had been saying all game to make the extra pass, and George happened to pass it to me, I was open. It was just a normal play.”
Coach Lee Underwood said he kept his team running the same offense in those last possessions but added a ball screen in hopes the Lions could not make the adjustments to keep his team from the basket.
“What happened is they did switch off our dribbler and they got helter-skelter a little bit. Our guys did a good job,” Underwood said. “They’re very athletic and Jacary Crews is a tremendous basketball player. They killed us on the boards in the first half. They’re just a good basketball team and that’s why they’re in the top echelon of our district. … We almost let them slip away with a win.”
The game-winning play came after the Lions overcame a deficit that reached as high as 8 points in the third quarter to tie and lead the Eagles several times. Before Evans’ basket, Warhill’s Jacary Crews — the game’s lead scorer with 23 points — made a free throw to put the Lions ahead 67-66 with just under 20 seconds on the clock.
The Lions started the game ahead 7-2, but the Eagles took the lead at the end of the first quarter and maintained an advantage until the first play of the fourth quarter.
The win puts the Eagles one game out of .500 in the Bay Rivers District – a goal they had hoped to reach with a win tonight but suffered a setback with a two-point loss to district foe Smithfield on Wednesday. Next week they will again play Smithfield but must first host Tabb, who defeated the Eagles by one point in the season-opener.
“We really had to win this game to get our momentum back after losing to Smithfield,” Evans said. “We had a bad game and we just had to get our game back.”
The Lions, who played without lead scorer Devonte Dedmon and head coach Justin Hayes on Friday, continue their slump. They have lost three out of the past four games after starting the season 4-1. They will face York and Poquoson next week, both of whom the Lions defeated in the first two games of the season.
