By Shannon Fagan, WEIS Sports Director
CEDAR BLUFF – Back during the summer, Cedar Bluff boys basketball coach Johnny Amison was doing research on the mental aspect of the game. He was watching Netflix, where he found a documentary called “The Playbook.”
Watching that documentary introduced Amison to the word Ubuntu – an African philosophy that teaches unity as a way of life (“I am because we are”).
“Doc Rivers (former Boston Celtics head coach) was on that,” Amison said. “He did it with the big three, when they got Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce. All of them had such individual mindsets. All of them were leaders, so he had to find out a way to mesh all of them together. He found that lifestyle.”
Amison is trying to instill that “lifestyle” to the Tigers. He even had the word Ubuntu printed on the back of their team warm-up t-shirts to remind them of the philosophy constantly.
On Friday night in their area game at home against Pleasant Valley, the Tigers finally started to fully believe in Ubuntu.
Junior guard Keondre Wynn banked in a 3-pointer before the buzzer, lifting the Tigers to a dramatic 57-54 victory.
Wynn finished the game with seven points – all of which he scored in the second half.
“It’s amazing. It’s one of the best feelings,” Wynn said of his buzzer-beating trey. “Obviously I can’t do it without my team. I didn’t have my best game, but thanks to my teammates, I was able to be in the right spot at the right time and put up the right shot.
“When we threw it in to Kuper (Bradley), I’m thinking he’s going to dribble the clock down until about three seconds. I’m thinking he was going to take the shot. I was wide open, but I didn’t call for the ball to be honest. When he passed me the ball, I knew there was like three or four seconds on the clock. I was thinking just shoot the ball and make it. That’s exactly what I did.”
Amison feels Wynn’s clutch shot will not only help his confidence, but the entire team as well.
“I think that’s going to go a long way in helping us become a better team,” Amison said. “In two years, this is probably the best team win we’ve had. We had some adversity (Friday), but we didn’t drop our heads. We didn’t get mad with calls that didn’t go our way. We turned the ball over I don’t know how many times, but we’re finally starting to live the Ubuntu. They’re starting to believe in it. I think that kind of helped pushed us over the top tonight.”
The two teams battled back and forth throughout the game. Cedar Bluff (6-5) held a 21-19 lead at the end of the first quarter. Pleasant Valley forged ahead at halftime 28-27 and led 42-38 at the end of the third quarter.
The two teams were tied approaching the two-minute mark of the fourth quarter, but the Tigers’ Zach Jones broke the tie with a 3-pointer, giving Cedar Bluff a 49-46 advantage.
The Raiders battled back to tie things up at 49, but then Bradley sank another Tiger trey with a minute to go to put Cedar Bluff back up three at 52-49.
A Shon Gleen steal led to him being fouled. He extended Cedar Bluff’s lead to four at 53-49 on the back end of two shots from the free-throw line with 52.3 seconds remaining.
The Raiders countered with a Mason Myers 3-pointer, which brought them back within one at 53-52 with 38.6 seconds to go.
Bradley was fouled and sent to the line with 29.1 seconds remaining. He made the second of two free throws to Cedar Bluff up 54-52.
Pleasant Valley got back to the free-throw line twice and made 2-of-4 shots to tie the game at 54 with 12.8 seconds remaining.
That prompted Amison to call time out and set up what turned out to be Wynn’s game-winning 3-pointer.
“We’ve practiced moments like this. I’d say we were prepared for it,” Wynn said. “I think we were given the opportunity to make the right play, and I think it ended well.”
Gleen led the Tigers with 16 points. Zach Jones tossed in 13 points. Jonas Brown came away with seven points and Zyrese Wynn finished with six points.
Jake Barnwell topped the Raiders with 14 points. Myers managed 10 points. Braxton Salster scored nine points. Cooper Dougal and Aiden Bonds finished with seven and five points respectively.
