WEEKEND SPORTS
Despite slow start, guard sinks winner at overtime buzzer
One of the WPIAL’s most dangerous scorers struggled to put the ball in the basket Friday in his team’s biggest game of the season.
“I was terrible,” Butler’s Devin Carney said afterwards while shaking his head.
It’s safe to say Carney was being a little too hard on himself.
After all, one of the shots that did fall might have been the most clutch make of his career.
Carney, a terrific junior guard, buried a 3-pointer at the overtime buzzer to lift defending champion Butler to a heartthumping 58-55 win at PennTrafford in a WPIAL Class 6A quarterfinal.
A year after Butler used lots of Ethan Morton magic to go on a thrilling postseason run, it was Carney’s turn to play the hero role. And he did it with Morton, who now plays at Purdue, rooting on his old team from the bleachers.
Butler (12-8), the No. 5 seed, will face a familiar foe in Tuesday’s semifinals when they take on No. 1 Upper St. Clair (18-1). Butler edged Upper St. Clair in two postseason thrillers last season, one of them in the WPIAL semifinals.
Carney has been a masterful scorer this season, typically pumping in more than 30 and sometimes 40 a game. The WPIAL’s third-leading scorer at 30.4 points a game, Carney was held to 21 Friday. He was 8 of 24 from the field, including 2 of 11 from behind the arc.
“Coach told me to keep my head up and just keep shooting,” Carney said.
Carney got his opportunity after Penn-Trafford senior Josh Kapcin continued his outstanding performance by making the game-tying layup with seven seconds left. Kapcin poured in a
game-high 25 points.
“Let’s get the ball to Kap and let Kap drive,” Penn-Trafford
coach Doug Kelly said of the plan coming out of a timeout that followed a missed free throw by
Mattix Clement, who made 1 of 2 at the line to give Butler a twopoint lead.
The problem was it allowed too much time for Carney to sprint up the court and get off a shot, which he did after taking the inbounds pass from Clement with five seconds to go. Carney dribbled to the left side and drained a 3-pointer with a hand in his face.
“I dribbled up there and I saw two guys on me and a guy right in front of me, so I just shot it and saw it fall in,” said Carney.
“If he got in a bad spot, I could have called a timeout and drawn something up,” Butler coach Matt Clement said. “But Dev makes tough jump shots. Let’s let him get that jump shot off. Or, the other part is, we’re in the double bonus. Maybe they foul him.”
It was a heart-wrenching loss for Penn-Trafford (13-6), the No. 4 seed which had won six games in a row and was making its first quarterfinal appearance since 2001. The Warriors were hoping to make it to the semifinals for just the second time and first since 1991.
“It was a team that was really hot and feeling good about themselves,” Clement said. “It was
just a tremendous effort. There were a lot of times we looked like we were on the ropes.”
Mattix Clement added 18 points for Butler, including a 3pointer that gave his team a 54-51 lead with 1:14 left in overtime. His brother, Madden, added nine points.
Penn-Trafford did a fine job defensively against Butler, which boasts the No. 1 scoring offense in Class 6A (74 points per game). Its 58 points tied a season low, this after the Golden Tornado tallied 49 in a first-round win against Norwin.
Penn-Trafford’s Nick Crum didn’t hit the biggest shot of the game, but it was close. After Carney connected on two free throws with 15 seconds left in regulation to extend Butler’s lead to 49-46, Crum nailed a 3pointer to pull Penn-Trafford even with 12 seconds to go.
After Crum’s basket, Carney misfired on a potential gamewinning 3-point attempt.
But when Carney was given a second chance, he came through.
Said Matt Clement, “He made an incredible shot.”