LOWER LAKE — Right down to the last basket — which, it turned out, was not a basket — everything went Middletown”s way in the 16th annual Record-Bee Hoop Classic.
The Mustangs won the Classic for the third time in five years by virtue of a 4-0 sweep over the county”s four other high schools, just as they did in the 2005 and 2006 tournaments, concluding with a tense 57-55 battle with Clear Lake on Saturday night at the Lower Lake High School gym.
Just by winning their first three games, the Mustangs assured themselves of the championship trophy going into their final game with the Cardinals. But that trophy would have been tarnished if the defending champion Cards had won … which for a second it looked like they had.
That second was the seventh one left in the game when Clear Lake forward Ryan Richardson sank a shot from beyond the perimeter to overcome the Mustangs” 56-55 lead. Getting the ball into the hands of Richardson, Clear Lake”s leading scorer, at that pivotal moment was set up during a timeout.
But it was not to be. An official”s whistle, barely heard, had been blown a nano-second before Richardson launched the shot. The Cards” Tanner Mansell was being charged with an offensive foul for bumping into the Mustangs” Jereomy Hoefer. It was as if a bomb of silence was dropped in the Lower Lake gym, hitting in the area of the Cardinal bench, where cheers got stuck in throats.
It was just about all that coach Glenn Wienke could stand. It meant that his Cardinals had lost three of their four games in the Classic by a cumulative total of four points, including a 61-60 game won by Lower Lake on Thursday.
“It was not a foul,” Wienke said. “What a terrible moment to make a questionable call like that.”
The moment was preceded by a memorably tight contest, one in which neither team led by more than six points.
Mustang coach Mike Mullen said he was concerned about the effects of a game a night earlier against Kelseyville that Middletown had to rally from 16 points behind to win.
The Cardinals led 30-25 at half. But the Mustangs gained the upper hand in the third quarter, which featured a crowd-pleasing basket-for-basket sequence in which the two teams put up 23 shots and only four were missed, all by the Mustangs.
John-Wesley Davis came off the bench to spark the Middletown side of the score-fest, netting nine points and dishing to Bo Sheffer at the buzzer to make it 51-47 Middletown.
In the end, the Mustangs won a slugging match, but they were hanging on the ropes.
John Hays, later named tournament MVP, led a balanced Middletown attack with 14 points. Davis added 13, Sheffer had 11 and Hoefer chipped in eight.
Richardson led the Cardinals with 24 points, topping 100 (102) for the four-game, round-robin tournament. Seth Glazier added 11 points.
In the earlier Saturday night game, host Lower Lake clinched second place with a 65-47 win over Upper Lake, which gave the Trojans a 3-1 mark for the tournament.
The Trojans controlled the game almost from the start and led 17-7 after one quarter and 36-13 by halftime.
Forrest Davis led the Trojans with 19 points, Jaymen Richardson had 12 and Scott Zandt finished with 11. Tyler Warren”s 10 points paced Upper Lake, 0-4 in tournament action.
