North Platte head coach Braydn Kemper celebrates with the student section after the Panthers held off Lawson by one point on Courtwarming on Feb. 6.
DEARBORN - Courtwarming lived up to the hype for the North Platte boys’ basketball team (18-6), which needed the home crowd to help hold off Lawson (9-13) in dramatic fashion on Feb. 6.
The gymnasium was rocking all night – much credit to the packed student section – in what ended up being an instant classic in another KCI Conference clash. The first three quarters were a defensive battle with the scoreboard reading 24-23 in Lawson’s favor, but the fourth quarter was much higher scoring, totaling 37 points.
The Cardinals started the final frame with two quick free throws, followed by a 7-0 Panther run to retake control. North Platte led the rest of the way, despite Lawson having some chances late.
“We settled down and waited for our looks (in the fourth quarter),” North Platte head boys’ basketball coach Braydn Kemper said. “We got a little aggressive, and you get like that sometimes with a lot of people in the gym; you want to get the crowd pumped up instead of running your offense. We didn’t really work our offense and when we started settling down and working our offense, then we looked a lot better.”
The ending stretch was a lot of back-and-forth exchanging of baskets after Creek Johnson made the score 35-30 with 3:01 left. For the next two minutes, neither team was able to make a stop on defense while North Platte continued to hold onto the lead.
“We couldn’t get a stop. I mean we kept scoring, but then they kept scoring too so it didn’t really matter at that point how many we scored because they kept scoring,” Kemper said.
Trailing 41-40 as the clock wound down to the final minute, Lawson had no fouls and had to commit five in a row to get into the bonus and send North Platte to the charity stripe. Brenden Matt and Westin Snook – who got an offensive rebound on Matt’s second shot – both split a pair of free throws, but a lane violation waived off Snook’s make.
Lawson got the ball back, down two points, and called its final timeout with 7.1 seconds on the clock and ended up getting a baseline out-of-bounds play with 1.7 seconds left after a North Platte foul. Nick Hurst drew a shooting foul with 0.5 seconds remaining and had a chance to tie the game after making the first attempt, but the second shot was no good and the buzzer sounded to give the Panthers a 41-40 win.
“Down the stretch, our home court advantage really helped us. Our student section showed out tonight, that was the biggest I’d seen it in a long time here and it was awesome. They were loud and they affected the free throw at the end so props to them, they showed out and they made it a lot of fun,” Kemper said.
Johnson was big down the stretch, scoring all 10 of his points after being crowned Courtwarming King at halftime. Snook scored seven of his 11 points in the fourth quarter, including his only three.
The victory ended a 23-game losing skid against Lawson, giving North Platte its first win in the series since Dec. 11, 2008. The triumph put another notch on the belt for the Panthers as this became the first time since the 2013-14 season that they won three KCI Conference games.
“That’s a statement to the conference because it’s always a tough conference year in and year out so for us to get that many wins, it’s awesome, and it shows how hard the kids have been working in the offseason and in practice,” Kemper said.
North Platte snapped another conference losing skid against Lathrop (3-19), beating the Mules for the first time in 10 tries dating back to Feb. 7, 2014, with a 77-61 victory on Feb. 9. That gives the Panthers a 4-3 record in the conference, an improvement from the 3-11 record in the first two years under Kemper and the 0-21 stretch the three seasons prior to his arrival.
“We have a lot of guys that played a lot last year and started last year. It helps when you have four returning starters and the returning sixth and seventh man. We’re still young, we still play a lot of sophomores, but that experience of them playing as freshmen in games like this helps,” Kemper said.
North Platte has a first-round matchup with East Buchanan (16-7) – which was the last opponent on the regular season schedule, played on Feb. 13 – in the Class 3 District 15 Tournament at East Buchanan High School on Feb. 20 at 8 p.m. The Panthers are the smallest school in Class 3 and are the No. 6 seed, despite having more wins than the remaining teams in the district.