Castle boys hold on late in Toyota Classic final

Before the Toyota Classic boys’ championship game tipped off, Castle was searching to do something no other school has done.

In the 17 year history of the tournament, there has never been a boys’ team win three years in a row.

That is, until Saturday night when Castle beat Gibson Southern 59-57.

“We’ve had a great deal of success in most of the tournaments we’ve played in in the last couple of years,” said Castle head coach Brian Gibson. “We just had great senior leadership last year and we have great senior leadership this year.”

For a game that looked like a Castle runaway victory at the 4:24 mark of the third quarter -- when the Knights took their largest lead of the game at 35-20 after guard Alex Hemenway finished a 3-point play at the line -- everything changed in the fourth quarter.

Castle led 40-29 heading into the fourth, but with just 3:21 left in the game, the 11-point lead the Knights built over the course of three quarters was cut to just three points after Gibson Southern guard Nicholas Maurer finished off his own 3-point play at the line.

The Titans challenged the Knights on every play during the last three minutes of the game, but three points was as close as they could get.

Every time they cut into the lead, Castle had an answer.

“We needed a close ball game that we won,” Gibson said. “You need to experience that and we had not done that this year. We were fortunate to hold on and win.”

Hemenway, who led Castle with 18 points, doesn’t think Gibson Southern’s style of play changed during the last quarter. 

Instead, the way he sees it, the Knights sloppy play helped make the game close.

“I don’t think they played us any different,” he said. “We just made a couple on ball turnovers and that lead to some intensity (from the crowd) and they capitalized on it. They made big plays on the offensive end and stops on the defensive end.”