Sumter – The Wilson Hall boys basketball team defeated Laurence Manning Academy 47-44 on Friday at Nash Student Center. While the Barons won the SCISA Region 2-AAAA championship with the victory, head coach Rip Ripley was just as excited with the style of the victory.
“It was back and forth, and it was nice to win one like that,” said Ripley, whose team improved to 21-7 on the season while finishing 5-1 in the region. “We’ve had a number of games like that, but just a few where we came out on this end, so that was nice.”
There were six lead changes in the fourth quarter alone. A driving layup by Swampcat eighth-grader Scoop Dennis for the first points of the final stanza gave the Swampcats a 38-37 lead. A layup by Knox Buxton put the Barons back on top 39-38 before a steal and layup by Dennis gave LMA a 42-41 lead with 5:24 to go.
WH’s Daniel Burton got loose for his third slam dunk of the night to take it 43-42 with 4:40 left. Neither team would score again until four minutes later. That’s when Laurence Manning’s Mason Nivens hit a layup off of a nice assist from Zy Dennis. The final lead change came when Buxton was fouled with 31 seconds, and he hit two free throws to make it 45-44.
After an LMA miss, Buxton was fouled with 7.5 seconds remaining, and he sank two more free throws for the final 3-point victory as LMA missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
The win gave Wilson the top seed for the region tournament which begins on Monday at Sumter County Civic Center. The Barons are playing Camden Military, while Laurence Manning will take on Trinity Collegiate in the other game. The winner of those games will meet on Tuesday.
“I was hoping we would be able to finish the job and carry it on to the region tournament,” Ripley said. “This will help us out for seeding (for the state tournament, which begins on Saturday).”
Burton had a huge game as he was one of five Barons celebrated on Senior Night along with Jones DesChamps, Tucker Burnette, Connor Hanson and Andrew Brown. The 6-foot-8-inch Burton had 20 points while grabbing nine rebounds.
“He's special,” Ripley said of Burton. “It makes coaching so much easier to have guys like a lot of them. Tonight was his night."
Shawn Michael Matthews added 10 points for Wilson Hall, eight of them coming in the first quarter. Buxton finished with eight points, while Hugh Humphries had four, Ford Wilder three and Burnette two.
Laurence Manning, which fell to 16-8 and finished 4-2 in region play, was led by Josiah Burson with 12 points. Noah Tanner scored 10 points, hitting a pair of 3-point shots. Scoop Dennis finished with nine points while fellow eighth-grader Shane Goines had seven, Thomas Sumpter had four, and Nivens had two.
“We played hard and I'm proud of the effort,” said Swampcats head coach Will Epps. “Nobody played bad, we just didn't execute offensively quite the way we had hoped. It's more of them (Wilson Hall) doing a grat job. We tip our hats to them.
“We didn't shoot very well from the perimeter. If we would have shot a little bit better, it would have opened it up more getting to the basket.”
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