In Act 1, with Centerville leading by one point, Fairmont guard Brock Baker took a handoff at the top of the key going to his right. Centerville’s 6-foot-7 Baboucarr Njie switched to stay with Baker. But Njie fell, Baker measured a wide-open shot and swished a 3-pointer with 6 seconds left for a two-point lead.
Centerville got a timeout with 3.5 seconds left and had to go the length of the court. In Act 2, Njie caught a pass going up court and let an off-balance 3-pointer go at the buzzer that banked in for a 62-61 victory.
“He did a great job of feeling the time and getting it off when he needed to get it off,” Centerville coach Brook Cupps said. “And I don’t know if it beat the buzzer or not. It was pretty close.”
The Firebirds were trying to beat Centerville for a rare second time in a season after ending the Elks’ 43-game Greater Western Ohio Conference winning streak on December 28.
“I’m still processing it all,” Fairmont coach Kenny Molz said. “I know that’s a tough position for those officials with a bang, bang play like that at the end. To the naked eye, to me, he didn’t get it off in time. I thought he still had it in his hand. I did get a picture of it, people were sending it to me, but there were other opportunities earlier in the game, where if we get some stops ... there’s more than one possession that makes or breaks a game.”
Njie is now 2-for-2 on 3-point attempts this season. At the end of the third quarter, after another Baker 3-pointer, he drove the length of the floor in about the same amount of time for a layup and a 46-44 lead. Cupps had the same thing in mind when he set up the final play.
“I was grateful that he believed in me and my ability to get the ball and go make a play,” Njie said. “I was thinking I’m going straight to the hole, but when I was around the 3-point line I looked up and it said one. So I just let it go.”
The Centerville students joined in the sudden celebration under the basket in front of the Fairmont pep band.
“It was so surreal just seeing everybody run on the court and being hyped for me,” Njie said. “I loved the moment.”
The moments were plenty for Njie and others. He scored a team-high 20 points, including 11 in the first half to keep the Elks within 29-27.
“He played pretty well,” Cupps said. “If we could do a better job of throwing the ball in the post to him, I thought he could have scored a lot more. But we didn’t do a very good job of entering it as the game wore on.”
Centerville’s Jonathan Powell found more openings in the second half to score 16 of his 19 points.
Fairmont was led by Evan Gentile’s 24 points. He made four timely 3-pointers and stole the ball back under the basket for a layup with 1:13 left to cut the Elks’ lead to 59-58 and set the stage for the final six seconds.
“It seems like the ball finds him a lot of times, and he’s a heady, crafty player, and he puts himself in those situations,” Cupps said.
The loss was the third straight for Fairmont, but Molz was much more pleased with this performance than a 16-point loss to Miamisburg and a 23-point loss to Cincinnati Elder.
“I feel for our guys because they laid it all out on the floor tonight,” Molz said. “You can give effort and do all the right things, and in life sometimes you still come up short, whether that’s your fault, or it’s outside of your control.”
Based on the recent history of the rivalry, Friday’s tight game and wild finish shouldn’t be surprising. When the teams met in the Division I regional semifinals in 2022 at Xavier, Centerville’s Tom House hit a winning shot with two seconds left.
“How we were just going back and forth with each other, nobody’s letting up each and every play, people making big shots — I just love how it’s so competitive throughout the whole game,” Njie said.
Cupps appreciated the hard-earned victory because he appreciates how disciplined the Firebirds play.
“They play the right way, they take good shots, they share the ball, they defend, they rebound,” Cupps said. “People make basketball a lot more complicated than it needs to be. The talent isn’t nearly as important as playing the right way. They’ve got good players, we’ve got good players and so when you have two teams that are trying to do that stuff, all of our games with these guys are going to be close.”
When Molz was a young coach at Monroe, he sought out Cupps and picked his brain about coaching.
“It’s fun when you have two competitive teams that try to play the right way, and Brook and I really respect each other,” Molz said. “He does it the right way, but at the same time we go out and we compete and it’s a fun atmosphere.”
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