Dillard boys head to another state title after grinding out overtime win in semifinals
Close game? No problem.
The Dillard boys’ basketball team has made winning close games during its postseason run a thing of routine and did it again Friday.
Locked in a brutally physical, grind-it-out, low-scoring battle with Tampa Hillsborough, Dillard once again found a way to come out on top, edging the Terriers, 47-44, in overtime in a Class 7A state semifinal at the RP Funding Center.
Dillard will go for state title No. 8 and its third in the last four years on Saturday at 2 p.m. against Crestview, a 74-51 winner against Lehigh Acres Lehigh in the other semifinal, and will look to tie Port St. Joe for third on the all-time list of state titles.
The Panthers lost to Boyd Anderson is their district final, but have came all the way around to win three tough regional playoff games on the road, including a one-point overtime win over Okeechobee, a four-point victory over BA in the region-semifinal rematch and ended Doral Academy’s record 50-game winning streak in the regional final.
“A high-strung game as both teams are big and got up and down the floor,” said coach Darryl Burrows, who is now 9-2 in state semifinals in his 11 trips to Lakeland since taking over the program in 1993. “That team is big, bigger than we were, with a really, really, good point guard [in Christian Deleon]. We had kind of a week to prepare, so we kind of put some stuff together to make sure we were able first to handle No. 11, to make sure that we kind of limited them to one shot. We didn’t do a great job of that in the first half, but hopefully we kind of got better as the game went along.”
Dillard (21-6) ultimately came out on top thanks to some clutch play by its senior leader, point guard Deshawn Bartley.
Bartley’s off balance driving layup and an and-one after getting fouled put his team up 42-37 with 1:55 left in overtime and gave the Panthers the breathing room they needed to force Hillsborough (27-3) to foul. And it was Bartley who went to the line all three times making 5 of 6 free throws to seal it.
When Terriers forward Tyriq James hit a three-pointer with 13 seconds left, the Dillard lead was 43-42 and still very much up in the air.
Bartley nailed two more free throwns with nine seconds left and the Panthers, with Hillsborough still in a one-and-one situation smartly fouled in the back court with seven ticks left.
When DeLeon missed the front end of the one-and-one, it was Bartley who secured the rebound, got fouled and then made two more free throws to lock it up as the Terriers hit a meaningless jumper as the buzzer sounded.
“We live for big moments and always try and keep our composure,” said Barley, who led all scorers in the game with 18 points along with seven rebounds. “We’ve got to have faith in each other as a team and the coaches have faith in us. Free throws? I practice them every day, so I’m very comfortable shooting them down the stretch. I really didn’t feel that much pressure.”
The Panthers appeared to be in good shape late in the third quarter. Trailing 19-15 three minutes before halftime, they proceeded to bridge the end of the second quarter and first 5:31 of the third to go on a 19-4 run and take a 34-23 lead.
But from that point on it became a major offensive struggle as Hillsborough returned the favor with a 12-1 run to take a one point lead midway through the fourth.
After senior Makerere Williams made a putback basket off a rebound to put Dillard team back up 37-36 with 4:04 left, neither team would score again until there were 20 seconds left when DeLeon made one of two free throws.
Chandler Mack had a chane to win it in regulation for the Panthers, who finished 29.4 percent from the floor for the game, but the junior wing’s driving layup was blocked.
“Tomorrow’s going to be a different contest with Crestview because they’re a lot smaller, but they run their sets very well. They shoot the ball well, so it’s kind of going to be an opposite attraction there,” Burrows said. “We’ve got to be able to close out now and chase guys. Hopefully our advantage is going to be in the inside.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2019 at 2:59 PM.
