Tide's season ends as buzzer-beater falls short

In a game of two different halves, the Columbia boys' basketball team couldn't overcome a bad first half and saw their season end in the quarterfinal round of the District Three Class AA playoffs Saturday afternoon at Hershey High School.


The Crimson Tide (10-13) couldn't overcome a poor shooting first half and lost to Wyomissing,50-49.

In the first half, the Tide, who was playing its first game in 17 days, shot six of 25 from the field and trailed the Spartans 23-16.

In the second half, the shots started to fall, which gave the Tide a chance to win the game at the buzzer. Dominique Johnson's buzzer-beating jumper from the right elbow fell short, ending a frantic second half for the Tide.

As cold as the Tide was in the first half, they connected on their first four shots from the field to open the second half to cut the Spartan lead to one, 27-26 on a jumper from Tre' Simms (18 points). Wyomissing (13-10) went on a four-point run, leading 31-27 on bucket in the paint by Stuart Kase with about two minutes left in the third quarter.

That's when the Tide got hot again. Olajuwon Michael (12 points) and Nick Nobile each scored four points allowing the Tide to take a 35-32 lead after three quarters.

The Tide extended their lead to five points early in the fourth quarter before Wyomissing scored seven of the game's next nine points to tie the game with five minutes left.

The game went back and forth over the next five minutes before the Spartans went up three points on a foul shot by Duval Singleton with 19.4 seconds left. Simms countered the score with two foul shots to pull the Tide within one with 17 seconds left. But Wyomissing thought they had iced the game on a bucket by Joe Cacchione (14 points) with four seconds left.

At that point, Wyomissing led 50-47 but with two seconds left, Simms was intentionally fouled on a three-pointer. With no one at the line, Simms made two of three and the Tide got the ball back. That's when Johnson's game-winning shot fell short.

The first half was not good for the Tide. They fell behind 9-1 in the first half, recovered to pull within 9-6 after eight minutes on a 2-10 shooting quarter. In the second quarter, the shooting was not much better as the Tide was 4-15 from the field, but only trailed in the game by seven at the half.