Millard North and Gretna produced two boys basketball thrillers when they matched up a season ago, and that trend continued on Thursday night as the No. 2 Mustangs outlasted the No. 5 Dragons 80-75 in overtime.
Story of the Game
Millard North is a veteran-heavy squad, starting four seniors and a junior, but it was a sophomore who made the biggest play of the game.
With the score tied at 75-all in the final minute of overtime, senior Neal Mosser attacked the basket, drew an extra defender and kicked it out to his younger brother Major. The sophomore nailed the shot from the right wing in front of his bench with 17 seconds to go to put the Mustangs up by three.
Neal Mosser to Major Mosser for the go-ahead 3. pic.twitter.com/6sKoWtSplB
— Jacob Padilla (@JacobPadilla_) January 12, 2024
Landon Pokorski looked to answer with a deep 3 of his own on the other end, but it didn’t go down. Kade Cook tried to tap it back out to Pokorski but Elijah Gaeth intercepted it and took it the other way for a layup to seal the victory.
The younger Mosser scored five of his seven points in overtime, adding a pair of free throws as the Mustangs shot 100% from the field and foul line, with two turnovers being their only blemish in the extra period.
It was 16-all after one and the Mustangs took a five-point lead into halftime. Millard North hit its first three shots of the third quarter and kept the Dragons off the board to extend the lead to 12, and the Mustangs spent much of the third period with a double-digit lead.
“We talk a lot about, defensively, getting stops and if we keep the ball out of the paint,” Millard North coach Mike Etzelmiller said. “They got shots that they wanted, and then I felt like we did a better job of maybe making those shots a little bit tougher in that third quarter.”
To the Dragons’ credit, however, they didn’t quit. Gretna closed the third period on a 9-0 run (including a monster dunk from senior Kade Cook) to make it a two-point game heading into the fourth.
Five straight from Neal Mosser including a step-back 3 stretched the lead back out to eight early in the fourth, but Gretna rallied to tie it up three times before finally taking the lead at 66-64 on back-to-back Alec Wilkins layups. The lead changed hands two more times before Gaeth got to the basket to tie it up with 13 seconds to play and Gretna couldn’t get a shot to fall on the final possession, sending the game to overtime tied at 69-all.
“Just super proud of how they competed,” Etzelmiller said. “They could have easily thrown the towel in, they could easily start blaming each other. We made a handful mistakes there, just not taking care of the basketball. They were extremely hard physically, defensively. We knew there were going to be. This is a team, Coach [Brad] Feeken and Coach [Bill] Heard pride themselves on defense and being strong and being tough. And we said if we thought we were going to be tough, and this is a Feeken quote, if we thought we were going to be tough, we had to be tougher.”
Coach Speak
“We just had some big players step up and make some big plays,” Etzelmiller said. “We think very highly of Neal and Major. All the confidence in the world for him knock down a shot like that. Eli, just being very concentrated about getting the ball to the rim. I thought when he gets the ball to the rim, he’s hard to guard. Then obviously when you’ve got a guy like Derek Rollins to feed, it really helps your offense be productive each time down. That’s where I felt like, late in the game, we really needed to force the ball inside and I thought we were successful at times.”
Standout Performers
Rollins, the 6-foot-5 junior, led the Mustangs with 20 points and 10 rebounds, doing all of his damage in the paint.
Neal Mosser added 18 points on 7-of-10 from the field (2-of-5 from 3) and 2-of-2 from the free-throw line and five rebounds. He didn’t miss a shot after halftime.
Gaeth finished with 17 points on 50% shooting with five assists. Senior Grant Urbanek added 14 points on 5-of-9 from the field (4-of-7 from deep), including a big triple in the fourth quarter.
As a team, the Mustangs shot 55.2% from the field including 40% from 3 and only turned the ball over five times in 36 minutes.
Gretna senior Alex Wilcoxson led everyone with 24 points on 7-of-14 from the field, 3-of-4 from 3 and 7-of-8 from the foul line plus six rebounds. Cook finished with 18 points on 8-of-12 from the field and 2-of-3 from the line with five boards and two steals. Pokorski had a tough night shooting-wise but still stuffed the state sheet with 16 points, seven rebounds and six assists.
