Wyche’s last-minute, overtime heroics send Pines Charter to 2nd straight state title game
Elijah Wyche stood with his hands lifted to the sky and a hero’s smile stripped across his face, the end of an impromptu procession line near midcourt at the RP Funding Center. Kolby King wrapped him in a bear hug. Pete Laidley reached for a high five. Every one of Wyche’s teammates wanted their moment with Pembroke Pines Charter’s hero.
Pembroke Pines teetered on the brink of another final-four heartbreak Thursday until the final minute of the Class 5A semifinals. It took a seven-point comeback and last-minute survival in regulation just for the Jaguars to get into overtime, and then it took three game-winning plays from Wyche in the last minute to pull out a 63-57 win against Tampa Jesuit in Lakeland.
“That’s what he does,” coach Dave Roca said. “There was no surprise there and he’s keeping his level of tenacity high throughout the game.”
Wyche scored four points and grabbed two rebounds — one on offense and one on defense — in the final minute to help Pembroke Pines (12-3) finish on a 6-0 run and fend off an upset bid from Jesuit (25-5) to reach the 5A championship for the second straight year.
Last season, the Jaguars’ first trip to the final four ended with a devastating loss in the state title game. They’ll return to the RP Funding Center on Saturday to try to redeem themselves against Fort Walton Beach Choctawahatchee.
On Thursday, Pembroke Pines, ranked No. 33 in the nation by MaxPreps, needed a heroic final minute from Wyche to prevent its heartbreak from coming a round earlier in 2021.
Wyche and King were the foundation of everything the Jaguars did in the semifinal. Jesuit bombed three-pointers on one end and Pembroke Pines used its size advantage on the other. With the Jaguars either leading or tied for all of overtime, they slowed the pace and forced the Tigers to come to them. King dribbled away the clock until Jesuit came with a double team and then he found one of his forwards in the gaps in the Tigers’ zone. Most often, it was Wyche.
With a minute to go and the game tied 57-57, King threaded a pass to Wyche in the high post and the wing attacked to hit a go-ahead layup with 55.5 seconds left.
Wyche finished with a game-high 24 points and 11 rebounds, and King added 14 points and a game-high eight assists.
“I was really grateful that my teammates were able to trust me on the high post,” Wyche said, “because it was open the whole game.”
Pembroke Pines took a timeout to set up its defense and still Jesuit senior Joe Pesansky got a good look inside. His shot rolled off the rim and Wyche soared through traffic to pull in a defensive rebound and start the Jaguars off in the other direction.
King set up Laidley for an easy layup, but the forward blew the shot. Out of nowhere came Wyche, still racing back from the playing defense to climb through traffic again and grab an offensive rebound. The junior finished the putback through contact and Pembroke Pines’ lead grew to 61-57.
“We always keep the game in the tempo of our play, not their play,” King said. “That’s how basically every time we win because they play our energy.”
Even as their torrent of threes pushed the Tigers into a 40-33 lead with 6:45 left in regulation, the Jaguars stuck to their formula.
Last year, Pembroke Pines was one of the best shooting teams in South Florida and lost in the state championship because it shot just 13.6 percent from three-point range in the final. This year, the Jaguars don’t need the three. Jesuit went 11 of 25 from deep and Pembroke Pines went 0 of 13, but the Tigers didn’t trick the Jaguars into a three-point shootout.
Pembroke Pines took a timeout after Jesuit’s 9-0 run gave the Tigers a seven-point lead and assistant coach Paul Brown gathered them. Brown, who has handled in-game coaching duties this year with Roca taking a backseat because of COVID-19 concerns, didn’t want the Jaguars to panic.
“Settle down,” he recalled telling them. “We’ve got a lot of time left. We can get back in this game if we do all the right things execution-wise and defense-wise.”
Pembroke Pines hit right back with a 10-0 run, as Wyche and Laidley, who finished with 12 points, scored six straight points in less than a minute, then let King and fellow guard Caelum Ethridge put the Jaguars ahead.
With 10 seconds left, Jesuit senior Jack Delp hit a game-tying three and Pembroke Pines couldn’t get a shot up on the final possession, so the semifinal went to overtime tied 53-53.
The Jaguars never trailed in the extra period. Wyche and Ethridge both made layups, and the Tigers hit another three to tie the game 57-57 before Wyche took over the final minute to get Pembroke Pines back to the championship for the second time in program history.
“Last year when we were here, we didn’t shoot the ball well at all, so we had nightmares,” Roca said. “We wanted to get the ball to the basket and finish on the inside.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2021 at 6:39 PM.
