End of the road: Pinecrest eliminates Leesville Road from 4A playoffs
It was another packed house at Leesville Road High.
Twenty minutes before tip off disappointed fans were turned away, some trying to bum extra tickets off of people entering the building. No. 2 Leesville Road sold out its gym for the third straight game, this time a fourth round match with No. 3 Pinecrest.
When the final horn sounded, half the fans in attendance raced to the floor to be with their winning team. This time, though, it was the green and gold of the Patriots’ faithful and not the Leesville Loonies celebrating.
Pinecrest waved goodbye to the Leesville fans and moved on to the NCHSAA 4A east regional with a 63-59 win over the Pride. Leesville Road finished the season 21-8, while the Patriots, winners of 10 in a row, improved to 27-3.
For Leesville Road, it wasn’t the ending they wanted, their 12-game winning streak snapped. But the Pride had its chances. Down 62-59 with 8.7 seconds remaining, Leesville Road guard Carter Whitt missed a three from the right wing that would have tied the game. Patriots guard Bradlee Haskell hit two out of four from the line to close out the game. Haskell, a 6-2 junior, finished with a game-high 30 points.
Whitt, also a junior, led the Pride with a team-high 16.
“Carter Whitt is my horse if I never win another race,” Leesville coach Russ Frazier said. “He’s taken that shot 10 out of 10 times and I’m going to bet on him making it every time.”
After leading 50-46 to start the fourth, the Pride only hit three shots from the floor in the fourth quarter. Pinecrest suddenly couldn’t miss. The Patriots started the fourth quarter on a 10-2 run and Leesville never recovered. The Pride did pull to within one, 60-59, after a long two from junior guard Chase Hakerem. Haskell then hit three out his next six free throws to seal the win. Haskell scored the final six points for Pinecrest.
Leesville Road trailed the entire first half, taking its first lead, 33-32, on a layup from Aaron Zemonek. Their biggest lead, 50-44, came after a reverse layup from Hakerem late in the fourth, but the Pride would shoot 3-12 from the floor the rest of the way. The Patriots hit 4 out of 9 of their shots from the field. Pinecrest shot the ball extremely well, connecting on nine three-pointers.
Leesville, normally a great shooting team, struggled from the start.
“We took some really bad shots,” Frazier said. “And made some bad decisions at crucial times and I thought Pinecrest took a big advantage of that. Their execution, when it boiled down to it they did a better job than we did.”
Leesville Road spent most of the first half playing catchup to the hot shooting Patriots. Pinecrest led by as many as 11 (29-18), but the Pride closed the second quarter on a 10-3 run, trailing by four at the half.
Leesville didn’t do themselves any favors coming out the gate. The Pride started the game 2-for-10 from the field, but still managed to be within one, thanks to going perfect from the foul line. The Patriots got it going in the second quarter, shooting 3-for-5 from behind the line in the second.
Pinecrest hit their first two field goals in the second, while Leesville committed four straight turnovers. Down 21-11, Deon Daniels scored the first basket of the quarter with a deep three, but the Patriots countered with one of their own from Haskell. The 6-2 junior guard was a handful in the first half, scoring half of the Patriots’ points in the first half.
But Leesville closed out the half strong, getting a three from Whitt, followed by a powerful dunk from Jalon McDonald.
That momentum carried into the third quarter, when the Pride finally got the lead, but Pinecrest shot its way back in the game. Once they went up 51-50 on a three from Sam Stolz, the Patriots never looked back.
“We never got into any flow,” Frazier said. “We never did anything we needed to do to be successful tonight.”
And so it comes to and end for the Pride, who had their sights set on a return to the regional finals, but come up one game short. In the locker room, Frazier said he talked with each player one on one about the season. He’ll lose four seniors, including starting guard Deon Daniels, who ended his career with 15 points, but will return seven players who contributed this season, including Whitt, the top player in the state in the class of 2021 and McDonald, who scored 13 against Pinecrest.
“We want to improve in the next 300 days,” Frazier said. “We do have a very, very, very, great group of returners and I expect they will use this, not as motivation, but use this as wanting to get back to this moment for the fun of it.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2020 at 10:13 PM with the headline "End of the road: Pinecrest eliminates Leesville Road from 4A playoffs."
