‘We accomplished something bigger than ourselves’: Tigers give stiff test to top-ranked Eagles but fall short in state title game

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The Canton boys basketball team was eight minutes away from glory.

They just could not keep the monster under the bed long enough.

Canton led top-ranked Eugene 49-45 entering the fourth quarter of Thursday’s Class 2 state championship game at Mizzou Arena, but back-to-back impact plays by Eagles senior guard Justice Allen followed by a 4-minute, 34-second scoreless drought by the Tigers helped the Eagles pull away for a 72-61 victory and their first state title in any sport in school history.

The Tigers held Allen, who went 6 of 6 from 3-point range and had 20 points in the first half, scoreless in the third quarter. Canton outrebounded Eugene 14-3 and scored the final five points of that quarter to put themselves in the driver’s seat.

Then the Tigers shot 28.6 percent from the field and turned the ball over four times in the fourth quarter leading to seven Eugene points. Meanwhile,. the Eagles (28-4) missed just two field goal attempts, made 18 free throws and did not cough up the ball once in the final eight minutes.

“Our defense was really good toward the end of the third quarter,” said Canton coach Dalton Armontrout, whose team was ranked 10th in the final Missouri Basketball Coaches Association poll. “We capitalized on the offensive end and got layups. During that fourth quarter stretch, we turned the ball over and they capitalized on it.”

Allen had his fingerprints on possibly the most pivotal of those turnovers. Just 15 seconds after he tied the game at 49 with his first points of the half on a 3-pointer from the right corner, Allen stole the ball from Bryce Baker and assisted Ethan Wunderlich on a fastbreak layup with 6:06 left, capping a 6-0 Eagles run that gave them their first lead since the 3:25 mark of the third quarter.

Preston Brewer knotted the score at 51 with a pair of free throws 10 seconds later, but those were the last points Canton scored until 1:22 to go when Brewer stopped a 12-0 Eagles run with a short jumper. The Tigers (25-6) only cut the deficit to as small as seven from that point forward.

“I thought for the first three quarters that our defense was not what it had been on our postseason run, and these guys took that to heart,” Eagles coach Brian Wilde said. “Our energy and intensity on that end of the court really picked up in the fourth quarter, and I feel like that fed into our offense.”

Armontrout said Allen’s game-tying triple swung the momentum drastically in Eugene’s direction.

“We did everything we could,” Armontrout said of the Tigers’ defense on that possession. “We just had to settle down and play our game. Every possession matters in this state tournament. We didn’t value the basketball towards the middle of the fourth quarter, and it cost us.”

Brewer put a bow on his Canton career with a 30-point, nine-rebound, three-assist effort on 11-of-18 shooting from the field and 4-of-8 shooting from beyond the arc.

“We called him a monster in the scout, and he lived up to the bill on that,” Wilde said of Brewer. “He rebounds so well. His post moves are fantastic. His footwork and touch is really good. He’s doing all that in the post and he’s a 43 percent 3-point shooter, too. He’s a heck of a ballplayer. He’ll probably be the Class 2 Player of the Year. He’s just fantastic.”

Brewer still felt like he left some food on the table.

“I made it all the way to the fourth quarter with no fouls, so I feel like if I was more active, I could have made it harder for their guards to get around screens, could have made it harder for them to make post entry passes,” Brewer said. “That’s something I’m probably going to hang onto for quite a while.”

The sting of a state championship loss will stick with Brewer for a while, too, but so will reaching the title game for the first time in program history.

“Everybody wanted to bring home that first-place trophy, but we are officially the Canton Tiger basketball team that has made it the furthest in the postseason,” Brewer said.

That fact was not lost on Canton junior guard Kaden Oliver, who scored Canton’s first points of the game, was the only other Tiger in double figures with 10 points and matched Brewer with a team-high three assists.

“(Eugene has) been the No. 1 team in Class 2 pretty much all season long, and we battled, we fought, and I’m just so proud of our guys,” Oliver said. “I just felt like we went out there and ignored the rankings and all that. I’m so proud of our guys for just believing in each other.

“We accomplished something bigger than ourselves.”