‘We get to practice tomorrow’: Canton fends off Harrisburg to reach Class 2 final four

CANTON, Mo. — The Harrisburg boys basketball team was determined Preston Brewer would not beat it Friday night in the quarterfinals of the Missouri Class 2 state tournament.

So, Kaden Oliver and Drew Gottman stepped up to keep Canton’s magical season alive.

Oliver buried four of his five 3-pointers in the second half — all of them either tying the score or giving his team the lead — and Gottman hit two clutch baskets in the fourth quarter to help the Tigers rally for a hard-fought 65-60 victory to earn their first trip to the final four in a decade.

Canton, now 24-5, will face Puxico at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Mizzou Arena in Columbia. The Indians (27-3) knocked off South Iron 61-43 in their quarterfinal game.

“I can’t talk right now,” a drained Canton coach Dalton Armontrout admitted in the bedlam that followed the contest that saw nine ties and 12 lead changes. “They came at us. They were physical like we knew they were going to be. I’m proud of the guys. We did everything right toward the end. We get to practice tomorrow.”

Harrisburg collapsed three defenders around Brewer nearly every time the 6-foot-8 senior touched the ball in the post. He still managed to score a team-high 26 points despite being jostled, leaned on and occasionally thrown to the floor, and his three free throws in the final 5.3 seconds sealed it.

Yet, he pointed to the contributions by Oliver and Gottman as the deciding factor.

“(Oliver) has been able to do that all year, and we wouldn’t be here without him,” Brewer said of the junior guard who finished with 25 points. “Both him and Drew hit clutch threes there towards the end that swung the momentum.”

The game appeared to be slipping away from Canton when 6-foot-5 forward Trace Combs sank a 3-pointer from the top of the circle — part of a scintillating 30-point effort — to give Harrisburg its biggest lead at 55-50 with 7:18 remaining.

Brewer answered with a spinning, Euro step basket in traffic before Oliver drained a 3-pointer deep from the left wing and Gottman followed with another three from the left corner to put the Tigers on top 58-55 with 5:19 to go.

“Coach Armontrout told us our season was on the line,” Oliver said.

However, Canton turned the ball over 23 times overall against heavy pressure and three of those miscues late prevented it from building on its lead.

While they clamped down defensively, the Tigers didn’t score again until Gottman split two defenders with a driving layup high off the glass for a 60-58 lead with 42 seconds left.

Rylee Robinson missed two free throws at the other end, but Harrisburg retained possession when the ball caromed off the foot of Tyler Frazier and out of bounds in the scramble for the rebound.

However, the Tigers surrounded Combs just inside the free-throw line and poked away the ball on the ensuing possession. Oliver hit two free throws with 11.9 seconds remaining and Brewer added his three charity tosses to close it out.

“They made a couple of more plays than we did, and in a game as tight as this between two great teams, it usually comes down to a couple of plays,” Harrisburg coach Kyle Fisher said after his team bowed out at 24-6.

“I thought if we could hold Brewer to around what we had and kind of neutralize everybody else a little bit that we’d be in good shape. And we did that with the exception of Oliver. I thought he was the difference in the game. He made some tough, well-guarded shots.”

Armontrout agreed.

“He stepped up big. He had some big-time shots.”

The left-handed Oliver, who averages about 10 points per game, knew he had to take advantage of his opportunities. He sank three 3-pointers in a three-minute stretch in the third quarter.

“They were sending three people at Preston in the post and digging, so if we gave him a touch, I knew that my guy would collapse,” Oliver said. “Preston did an absolutely amazing job of feeding me the ball on the wings, and I just trusted my shot.”

Canton led by as many as eight points late in the second quarter before Combs pulled Harrisburg within 30-28 at the half despite the Bulldogs making just 36 percent of their shots. Combs had 19 of his team’s points in the first half.

“He’s hard to guard, no matter what you throw at him,” Brewer said. “He can get to the rack with ease. He can shoot it. He’s just a really, really good ballplayer.”

There were seven ties and nine lead changes in a seesaw second half. Three-point and free-throw shooting ultimately proved to be the difference.

Canton made 7 of 18 tries from 3-point range while Harrisburg was just 6 of 25. And the Tigers went 18 of 23 from the line overall, compared to 8 of 15 by the Bulldogs, who were bidding for the ninth final four appearance and third title in program history.

Gottman, another junior, finished with 10 points for Canton, which had lost all three previous postseason encounters with Harrisburg, including in last year’s sectional.

The Tigers reached the final four twice before, finishing third in 2014 and fourth in 2015. They’re looking forward to another shot at the program’s first title.

“This means everything,” Oliver said. “This is what we worked for all year. This was our goal. We just fought and fought and fought and believed in each other.”