The #7 (2A) Grundy Center boys basketball team led for the vast majority, but couldn’t hit shots when it mattered most, falling 48-46 to #4 (2A) Unity Christian in a 2A state tournament quarterfinal Tuesday at Wells Fargo Arena, as aired on 99 The Wave.
The Spartans controlled the tempo throughout the first half, building a lead to as many as eight points. They got several stops and had nearly twice as many shot attempts as the Knights in the first half, due in part to a plus 10 differential in turnovers.
In the second half, Unity Christian was held scoreless for nearly seven minutes. Judd Jirovsky hit two key three pointers, including one with six minutes left to go up 41-32. But from that point, Unity Christian scored 16 of the final 21 points. With less than five seconds left, a layup by Tiernan Vokes was blocked, and the Spartans couldn’t foul before time expired.
“I think in a nutshell, it was they made more plays than we did,” Head Coach Brent Thoren says. “We had our opportunities, we really did. And we just didn’t make enough plays, and credit to them, they made a lot of plays at the very end. I hate it for my guys. It was a really good game and we controlled a lot of it, but not what mattered the most. We missed some shots that were point blankers, and that doesn’t help. Nothing to say in regards to how we were able to not make that shot. We just didn’t convert and they did. It’s just they were getting easy transitions, and that’s what they wanna do. And we were trying to get them in a half court to try to lean on them a little bit defensively, and that’s the difference, is that they got easy runouts. And when we got in the half court, we held our own against them. But it just didn’t work out. We had the ball in the hands of the guys we wanted it in and they just turned it over. And unfortunately, that’s just how it goes sometimes.”
Senior Jalen Kirkpatrick says Unity Christian’s pressure defense forced the Spartans into some mistakes in the fourth quarter.
“We played our hardest, I know we did, we left it all out there,” Kirkpatrick says. “Just a few plays didn’t come down to how we wanted them to come out. I mean, we took good shots with the right shots that we wanted in the first half. I mean, our goal is just to play inside out. And I feel like we couldn’t quite get it inside like we wanted to, but we took some really good outside shots, and they just didn’t fall. I mean, countless times the ball went in and just popped right back out, but that’s just basketball. You’re gonna miss some shots, you’re gonna make some. And today we just couldn’t make the ones we needed to. I think we just got sped up as a team sometimes, it just forced some extra turnovers that we could have kept, and maybe got a bucket or two out of it instead of them going the other way and scoring. So I think just that pressure and a little bit different defense just caused us to throw a few extra bad passes in there.”
Ryker Thoren led with 14 points and Jirovsky added 11. Grundy Center’s season has closed at 22-3.
