Seaholm Boys Basketball Stuns Brother Rice In Overtime 44-43

Jaws hit the floor at on Thursday night. 

Maples forward Sterling Johnson hit a 3-pointer with only 20 seconds left in overtime to give his team a 44-43 win over rival Brother Rice.

The senior’s first points of the game capped off an incredible comeback that saw Seaholm (2-2) erase a 17-point deficit in the final 10 minutes of regulation to stun the Warriors.

“I played college ball and I’ve never been part of something like that,” Seaholm head coach Jose Andrades said.

Johnson hadn’t hit a single shot the entire game and found himself wide open on the Maples’ final possession.

“Our point guard, Spencer (Eick) drove and created that open shot,” Johnson said. “I knew I would be open, but not that wide open. I waited a second and let it go.” 

Brother Rice (0-2) was in a zone defense and focused on preventing Paris Bass and Brett Houghton from getting the ball. The pair of juniors had burned the Warriors in the fourth quarter with some hot shooting.

Houghton hit two 3-pointers and scored 10 of his 14 points in the fourth.

Bass was the one to send the game into overtime. The guard hit a long jumper from the top of the key with 50 seconds left in regulation. He also scored Seaholm’s first four points in overtime. 

Brother Rice head coach Ed Schaffer didn’t fault his defense for giving Johnson some space. 

“That’s his first basket of the game,” Schaffer said.  “We’ll give him that shot all day, every day of the year. He can have that. If No. 35 (Bass) or No. 21 (Houghton) aren’t taking that shot and it’s a 3-pointer, I’m OK with it.”

Johnson, who said the shot was “without a doubt” the biggest of his career, has some range for a 6-foot-3 forward.

“He can shoot’em,” Andrades said. “He’s one of our bigs that can step out and pop a 3-point shot every so often.”

The hero of the game wasn’t as unlikely as the comeback Seaholm made. The Maples went cold for extended periods of time in the first half and put themselves in a huge hole. 

In the first, Chris Dasbach scored off the opening tipoff, but Seaholm didn’t score again for nearly seven minutes. Brandon Yousif hit a mid-range jumper with :54 seconds left in the quarter to end the draught. 

After an initial scoring burst, it was more of the same in the second quarter. Seaholm didn’t hit a single shot for the final 5:40 of the half and Brother Rice was able to take control with a 15-0 run.

The Warriors had a 31-14 lead with 3:03 left to go in the third quarter and then were outscored 23-6 to the end of the fourth.

Brother Rice couldn’t find anyone to step up on the offensive end of the floor. Jason Alessi led the Warriors with 16 points and four 3-pointers, but the sophomore only had one basket in the fourth.

“We’re a young team,” Schaffer said. “Young teams don’t know how to win games and we didn’t know how to win yet. We don’t have a guy, that veteran that could step up (offensively).”

Seaholm will try to keep the momentum going when it visits Livonia Franklin at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

“It’s definitely a confidence booster for a team, we’d like to be 3-2 going into break and continue that roll,” Andrades said.

Brother Rice has two more chances to win its first game of the season before break. It visits St. Francis High School in a game at Traverse City at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and then visits Lahser at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

“We played much better than we did in our first game, we’re going to keep getting better,” Schaffer said. “We’ll get better.”