Stone boys edge St. Charles on McCrae’s last-second FTs
McCrae nails two clutch free throws to give Stone 1-point win over St. Charles
With 8.3 seconds left in regulation, Thomas Stone’s Donovan McCrae missed the front end of a one-and-one opportuni- ty at the free-throw line with his boys basketball team trailing Wednesday night’s Southern Maryland Athletic Conference Potomac Division contest versus visiting St. Charles, 51-50.
However, the senior guard would get a chance to redeem himself with one-half of one second remaining after he was fouled by 6-foot-5 forward Sean Patterson while driv- ing to the basket.
With the pressure on, McCrae was clutch, calmly sinking both free throws as the Cougars delivered with the 52-51 victory over the Spartans in Waldorf.
“In practice we work on situations where we have to make pressure free throws,” said McCrae, who finished with five points in the game. “We came up big on defense and got steals in the last two minutes and we didn’t give up.”
On the call that put McCrae at the line with a half-second remaining, Stone head coach Dale Lamberth said, “It was a very gutsy call by the referee and from where I was standing when Donovan double-clutched [Pat- terson] didn’t bring his hand back. And anytime your hand comes down most likely you a foul is called.”
St. Charles head coach Brett Campbell felt that the call was questionable, but didn’t impact the over- all outcome of the game.
“Their guy drove and jumped into one of our guys and the call was made. It is what it is,” Campbell said. “We had a chance to put the game away and we just didn’t execute at the end.”
Stone (8-4, 2-2 SMAC Potomac), which suffered back-to back division losses to Lackey and Westlake last week, snapped St. Charles’ four-game win streak.
“All the close games that we’ve been in this year we weren’t rattled and no one was down. We were already in a dogfight with Lackey and Westlake,” Lamberth said. “So the guys did a great job of responding and making key stops on defense.”
Stone trailed 46-44