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Northview drops 2OT thriller to West Vigo
Northview’s boys basketball team was riding a rollercoaster of emotions throughout Friday’s matchup against West Vigo inside the Jim Mann Green Dome.
The Knights came back from a second half deficit to force overtime but were looking their third straight loss in the face before Brayden Goff saved the day by banking in a game-tying 3-pointer at the buzzer to force double overtime.
Goff then proceeded to score the first four points in double overtime, shifting the momentum onto the visiting sidelines. However, a few minutes later, Northview’s leading scorer and go-to playmaker was tagged with his fifth foul, forcing him to the bench for the remainder of the game.
Northview head coach Shawn Nevill said he saw the play develop in front of him and understood what Goff was trying to do. Unfortunately, he caught too much of West Vigo’s Zeke Tanoos while going for a steal and drew the whistle from the closest official.
“I saw what he saw. He threw a pass deep and it just didn’t quite get there – I think Tanoos was the one that stole it – and being the person Brayden is, he wants it so bad and did everything he could to get the ball back. He made that turnover and wanted to get us the ball back, and when he went to get it back, he got called for his fifth foul,” said Nevill. “That’s something he, as a sophomore, will learn from. Heck, we aren’t even in that spot if it weren’t for him.”
Shortly after Goff fouled out, Joshua Fowler, who drew the assignment of guarding Tanoos or Talan Boehler and was consistently gobbling up offensive rebounds to give Northview second and third opportunities on the offensive end of the floor, joined him with his fifth foul.
With two starters removed from the game with 3:30 left in double overtime, a slew of young and inexperienced underclassmen were thrust into the spotlight. And while it didn’t end up going the way of the Knights, as West Vigo ended the game on a 10-0 run to defeat Northview 68-60, Nevill said his group showed plenty of fight to win the game and will be better for it in the long run.
“Everyone is going to learn from this,” said Nevill.
To get to the final three minutes of double overtime, Northview had to do something it hadn’t done in the first two games of the season – make a fourth quarter comeback.
In its losses to South Knox and Sullivan, Northview possessed a multi-possession advantage but squandered them in the waning moments.
On Friday, the Knights took a five-point lead into halftime but found themselves trailing by three at the start of the final stanza after scoring just six points – all of which came on a pair of 3-pointers from Christian Bryan who tallied a career-high 15 points – in the third quarter.
This time, Northview didn’t have any issues playing in the final eight minutes. It scored a season-best 12 points that knotted the score at 44-44 and sent the game into overtime.
“We probably talked too much about the fourth quarter this week and we ended up forgetting that the third comes before that,” said Nevill. “We could’ve folded after that third quarter after giving up the lead, but we played a really good fourth quarter to get it to overtime.”
In the first overtime period, Northview, again, found itself with its backs against the wall. Trailing by three with 1.6 seconds left, Nevill called a timeout to draw up a play he hoped would result in a game-tying shot falling through the bottom of the net.
The first part of the play? Bringing Colton Bath, the backup quarterback for the Knights in the fall who had not appeared in either of the first two varsity games of the season, into the game to deliver the long pass down the court.
Bath was instructed to make a throw near the midcourt stripe to Fowler, the 6-foot-1 forward, who was then supposed to swing it over to Goff on the right sideline. However, when Bath was handed the ball by the official on the far baseline, it was freshman Trayven Buis, a 5-foot-8 guard, standing at halfcourt waiting on the pass.
Bath, starting on the left sideline, made a couple of quick shuffles to his right before throwing a jump pass over the top of West Vigo’s Landon Fields. Buis hustled towards the ball, which skipped once, and quickly fired a chest pass to Goff, who caught the ball and sent it towards the basket in one motion.
Looking on from in front of the bench, Northview’s coaching staff leaned to the right to get a good look at the shot and then immediately jumped up and down in jubilation as the ball bounced off the backboard and through the net to push the game into a second overtime.
“It was the old Valparaiso play,” Nevill explained. “Buis ended up being the one we were throwing the inbounds pass to, and he did a fantastic job. [Karson] Fosdick set a great screen and allowed him to get the ball and then he got it to Goff, and he banked it in. It was exactly how we drew it up.”
Northview led by as many as four points in double overtime but couldn’t take the lead across the finish line. Despite dropping their third game in a row – by a combined 19 points – Nevill, who noted the heart-breaking losses the Knights have suffered in the first three weeks of the season will be looked at as a stepping stone in the future, said the belief in the locker room remains strong.
“I would like to say people are going to be excited to get us early [in the season]. I think that teams that are going to play us later, they’re not going to like us as much. We’re going to be battle tested and have figured this out,” said Nevill. “I keep going back to this but we’re getting big minutes from freshmen and sophomores.”
NORTHVIEW (60) — Bryan 5-16 0-0 15, Goff 8-20 5-8 24, Buell 3-5 0-0 7, Fowler 2-5 1-2 5, Fosdick 0-4 0-0 0, Bell 1-2 0-0 2, McCollum 2-4 0-0 4, Buis 1-4 0-0 2, Schimmel 0-0 1-2 1, Bath 0-0 0-0 0. TOTALS 24-50 FG, 7-12 FT, 60 TP.
WEST VIGO (68) — Boehler 5-10 2-3 15, Tanoos 8-14 12-17 29, Fields 0-2 0-0 0, Smith 3-3 1-2 9, Pugh 4-9 5-8 15, Chambers 0-1 0-0 0. TOTALS 20-39 FG, 8-18 FT, 68 TP.
Northview 11 12 6 15 10 6 — 60
West Vigo 12 6 14 12 10 14 — 68
3-point shooting — Northview 9-30 (Bryan 5-16, Goff 3-7, Buell 1-2, Fowler 0-1, Fosdick 0-2, Buis 0-2), West Vigo 8-18 (Boehler 3-5, Tanoos 1-4, Fields 0-2, Smith 2-2, Pugh 2-4, Chambers 0-1). Rebounds — Northview 33 (Fowler 9, Goff, McCollum 7), West Vigo 21 (Tanoos, Pugh 8, Boehler, Chambers 2). Turnovers — Northview 13, West Vigo 12. Total fouls — Northview 24, West Vigo 15. Fouled out — Goff, Fowler.
Next — Northview (0-3) hosts North Putnam Friday. West Vigo (3-2) hosts Terre Haute North Tuesday.