Auburn 51, Guilford 46: With his season and his high school career on the line, Auburn senior Eddie Cade spoke up during his team’s timeout in the final minutes of the Guilford Class 4A Regional quarterfinal Monday.

“Eddie Cade was extremely vocal, saying that we cannot let them take this away from us,” Auburn coach Bryan Ott said.

His teammates responded by finishing the game with a 12-3 run to beat Guilford 51-46 and advance to the semifinals. Auburn (19-8) will play Jefferson (20-7) on Wednesday. Boylan (18-9) and Hononegah (25-3) meet in tonight’s semifinal.

Guilford (10-19) came close to pulling a huge upset over the Knights. The Vikings led by as much as four points, 43-39, with 3:33 remaining and had the momentum until Auburn knocked down two 3-pointers from Darnell Van Vleet and J.D. Danforth at 3:20 and 2:20 remaining.

The Knights then used key rebounds from Kashif Maxwell, Eddie Cade and Cortavien Wiggins to finish the game. Auburn outrebounded Guilford 11-5 in the fourth quarter after losing the rebounding battle 23-19 in the first three combined.

“I don’t know if it’s because we were looking past (Guilford), or what it was,” Maxwell said. “But we knew we’d be OK. We just had to fight and play some defense.”

Cade led the Knights with 13 points, while Ayrryous Ford had seven rebounds. Thomas Hawkins and Spencer Young — two players who were ineligible for the first half of the season — had 15 and 10 points for Guilford.

“We were just playing with a lot of heart tonight,” Hawkins said. “We know we’re just as good as anybody, and we didn’t have anything to lose.”

- Emily Tropp, rrstar.com