Auburn 57, Hononegah 43: Xavier Pittman was a returning starting guard from last year’s 20-8 Auburn team, but he was relegated to the role of sixth man after being ineligible for the first semester.
He didn’t let that keep him from being the X factor in Auburn’s 57-43 win Friday night over NIC-10 champion Hononegah in the finals of the Class 4A Guilford Regional. The win gave the school — a basketball power in the 1960s and 1970s — its first regional title since the 1978-79 season.
Pittman scored a game-high 20 points and at times seemed to be the only player who could accomplish anything offensively in a game where every basket was precious.
“The game is not won by one player, and if I’m not in the starting lineup my job is to come in and create some offense and get some turnovers,” Pittman said in the middle of a swarm of fans who stormed center court at the buzzer. “This is exciting. It’s my senior year. I was praying. I was hoping to God. I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
The sleep-deprived Pittman had so much energy the 5-foot-6 guard also was the second-leading rebounder for the Knights with seven. Still, he said it was Auburn’s team defense that was the key to the victory.
“We ran them around all night, and they didn’t have their legs when they were shooting,” Pittman said.
Indeed, after NIC-10 MVP David Brown scored the first basket of the game for Hononegah about 15 seconds into the contest, Auburn held the Indians to one more field goal in the first quarter and just 14 points in the first half.
Hononegah cut Auburn’s 12-point halftime lead to 37-30 on a traditional three-point play by Brown with 5:44 left to play in the fourth quarter and another Brown layup cut it again to 40-33 with 3:03 left, but Auburn closed the game out by scoring 17 of the last 27 points. Most of it came at the free-throw line, where Pittman hit 7-of-8 in the final 180 seconds.
“Pittman had to earn his way back with us,” Auburn coach Brian Ott said. “He and all of our kids are extremely unselfish, and he’s willing to give us that firepower off the bench.”
Hononegah coach Mike Miller said the Indians “just couldn’t keep Pittman in front of us.”
The Indians, who finished the season 26-4, didn’t handle Auburn’s defense very well, either. Hononegah missed all nine of its three-point tries in the first half and finished the game just 3-for-23 behind the arc.
Brown was the only Indians player to hit double figures, scoring 17 points. But he had to work hard for each point and Auburn kept him from affecting the game in other areas. Unofficially, the 6-3 guard, who will play Division 1 college basketball at Western Michigan next year, had just three rebounds, one blocked shot and no assists.
For almost all of the first three quarters, until foul trouble forced him to the bench, Brown was the sole responsibility of senior guard/forward Eddie Cade.
“We didn’t do anything special. We just put Eddie Cade on him,” said Auburn’s Darnell Van Vleet, who scored 13 points.
Miller credited Cade with making things difficult for Brown and then thanked his senior guard, who finished as the fourth leading scorer in Hononegah history, for leading the Indians to its first outright conference title since 1989-1990.
Auburn advances to play St. Charles North on Tuesday in the Class 4A Elgin Sectional semifinals. Whatever the result, Friday’s win is sweet for the team’s 10 seniors. When they began their sophomore year, Auburn was coming off its 12th straight losing season. The Knights have won 16, 20 and now 21 games the past three years.
- Alex Gary, rrstar.com
