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 Boerne guard Daniel Rogers scores what ended up being the winning shot against Pflugerville Hendrickson. Photo by Mike Reeder
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The Boerne Greyhounds punched a ticket to the regional semifinals of the state basketball playoffs Tuesday night with a rollicking, roller coaster win over Pflugerville Hendrickson at Dripping Springs.
The semifinal round is already set, with Boerne taking on South San at St. Mary’s Friday night. Tip-off is at 8 p.m.
It was fitting that a game that had more ups and downs and thrills a minute than an Indiana Jones movie would be decided in the final moments by the most laid-back player on either team.
After the Hounds had clawed their way out of a 15-point second-half hole, and with only 26 ticks left on the clock, shooting guard Daniel Rogers kissed a layup off the glass that put Boerne on top 68-67. It proved to be the last of three lead changes in the final two minutes. Hendrickson lost the ball out of bounds on its next possession, forcing the Hawks to foul. Rogers coolly iced the game with three straight free throws and was mobbed by his teammates as the final buzzer sounded.
“Oh my gosh, I’ve never been so nervous in my life,” said Rogers, who looked anything but nervous as he was salting the game away. “I prayed so much. What an awesome comeback.”
“That guy’s a player,” center Chuck Thornally said of Rogers. “He played almost the whole game, bringing the ball up against man-to-man pressure. He was real tired but he found a way to do it and made those free throws at the end.”
“They had been attacking us and then they slowed down and we got to be the attacker,” Boerne Coach Stan Leech said of his team’s late comeback. “Finally, we started running downhill.”
While Rogers’ five points at game’s end stole the show, it took more than one hero for Boerne to stave off elimination. The Hounds had jumped out to a 10-point lead in the second quarter, only to watch the lightning fast and physical Hawks wipe it out over the final three minutes of a half played at an unrelentingly frantic tempo. The two teams went into intermission tied at 32, but all the momentum was on Hendrickson’s side. The Greyhounds appeared tired and sluggish as the second half began, while Hendrickson kept up the blistering pace it had set in the second quarter.
“That’s the hardest game I’ve ever played,” Boerne forward Robert Moore said. “I was tired from the first few minutes of the game. You had to work so hard just to keep up with them.”
Boerne looked down for the count after the Hawks built a 12-point third quarter lead. But these Hounds have been down before and picked themselves up off the mat. Just last week, Boerne had wiped out an 11-point deficit and gone on to beat Pflugerville Connally. In this case, history was prologue.
“That’s probably the most I’ve ever run,” Thornally said. “They were up and down all night and pushing us but we just stuck with them. Our backs were against the wall and we had to come back and we did.”
The Hounds kept their poise and started chipping away. The fading Hawks helped by continuing to toss up low percentage shots even after they had built their big lead. They had made them early but they missed them late, and the Hounds came charging through the open door.
“It really ended up being a gift that they’d hit those shots early because then they kept thinking they could do it,” Leech said.
“I heard them talking among themselves, saying we need to slow the ball down and we can’t keep shooting threes,” Moore said. “But then they just kept jacking up shots and it eventually led to their downfall.”
Before fouling out with two minutes to play, center Chuck Thornally made the Hawks battle for every point and rebound while pumping in 16 points of his own. Moore scored 12 of his game-leading 28 points in the fourth quarter. He also went four-for-four from the line in the final period and 11 of 12 on the night. In addition to scoring the last five points of the game, Rogers nailed a pair of threes in the first half and finished with 20 points. Point guard Sterling Bennett, forward Zach Burdick and guard Hunter Simmons combined for just seven points but played their roles to perfection, defending, setting up the offense and moving the ball down court against the Hawk’s constant pressure.
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