Down 17 points at halftime, Page Pirates battle back to take lead, but fall on buzzer-beating three-pointer by Lake Norman Wildcats’ Trey Ford

Final from the Men’s NCHSAA 4-A West Regional at the Greensboro Coliseum Special Events Center:
Lake Norman Wildcats 61
Page Pirates 58

Page Pirates down 42-25 at the half and this was for sure a game of runs…Page had a first half run to tie the game at 18-18 and then there was an 17-0 run by Lake Norman to take the halftime lead and then with Page down by 17, Page comes out with a strong 18-0 run to go up by one at 43-42….Lake Norman could only score four points in the 3rq quarter, as Page took over with a total 22-4 run in the 3rd period….Lake Norman nailed six threes in that second quarter, but Page was playing lockdown defense to start the second half….

End of 1st Q:Lake Norman 18, Page 14….Halftime:Lake Norman 42, Page 15….End of 3rd Q:Page 47, Lake Norman 46….Lake Norman out-scored Page 15-11 in the 4th Quarter to win the game 61-58…..

Trey Ford from Lake Norman hit a shot from about 40 feet away at the buzzer to win the game for Lake Norman and Ford was one of the more unlikely heros…Lake Norman was trying to get a shot for Kishawn Pritchett or for Hunter Seacat and they ran over a minute off of the clock on their last possession….The ball got loose on the possession and it rolled Ford’s way on the left side of the court in Lake Norman’s half and Ford picked the ball up, stepped into his shot and let it rip and it went the distance, hit the backboard and it just beat the buzzer and the Pirates….

There is no way Ford was set up to take that last shot, but to his credit, he hit it and now nearly two hours later(Sunday afternoon) the rest it history…..Lake Norman’s first option was Pritchett on the last shot, but after scoring 16 points in the first half, he was held to just two points in the second half to finish with 18 total…Very good defense by Jeremy Harris and the other Pirates in the second half as they smothered Pritchett….Pritchett also grabbed 13 rebounds for the contest and he was named the Tournament MVP….
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Hunter Seacat would have been Lake Norman’s second option on the final play if they could have gotten him open down low, but he kept on drifting high on the last play….Xavier Hill-Mais did play man-up defense on Seacat and Pritchett inside in half #2, but Hill-Mais got assessed with a personal foul on Pritchett late and then while the smoke from that personal foul was clearing, Hill-Mais got hit with a technical foul…..Pritchett hit 3-4 at the line and them the Wildcats got the ball back too…

The end of the game was a back-and-forth tussle, sort of like the back-and-forth exchange in the prizefight, when both boxers refuse to go down and if they do take a hard blow, they refuse to stay down…..That is the way this game was….Page and Lake Norman exchanged rapid fire early and then bang, bang, bang, Lake Norman goes way out in front and Page is gasping for air, as they are trying to hold on for dear life….

And then they hit the halftime intermission and Page came back out with big-time rapid fire of their own, but they just could not knock Lake Norman out….Lake Norman had Page on the ropes at halftime, but the next thing you know, Page is on the comeback trail and their nearly took Lake Norman under for good…..

After the Page Pirate rapid fire run to get back in this game, it was toe-to-toe for the last five minutes of the contest/bout…..Nobody from Page left anything on that floor, with the exception of a few bodies that could not get up due to exaspiration when the game was over….Very tough to get back up and walk away from a game like this one…You are down, but you fight back, but the team you nearly took out, still walks away the winner…..

It was like watching a heavyweight prizefight today and for Page, the final scorecard read, Lake Norman 61, Page 58 and the judges would probably call this one a technical knockout….Page was wobbly at the half, but Coach James Abell convinced his team that they had to come back out and play defense like this was their last game ever, and that pretty much is what Page did…..

This loss/defeat will leave a black eye for a-while, but Page will recover….Can’t say how long it might take to get over this one, but you have to be proud of the way these kids battled back today….

This one will sting, but you can’t take away how competitive Page was this season….Pirates finish with a mark of 28 wins and just three losses and in those three defeats, Page fell by two points to Greensboro Day in overtime, by one point to Dudley at Page and by three points, on a buzzer-beater to the Lake Norman Wildcats….Three losses, by a combined six points….

Page is going to really miss seniors Jalen Gavin and Jeremy Harris, but they can start working on a game-plan soon, for a starting five that would include Anthony Eaves(senior), Ty Graves(junior), Xavier Hill-Mais(senior), Jalen Seegars(junior) and Diondre Overton(junior) in 2014/2015….Not too shabby, if you ask around…..

Page falls, but they will get back up…..From today’s game Ty Graves led the way for Page with 15 points, Jeremy Harris had 13, Anthony Eaves and Xaiver Hill-Mais had 11 each, Jalen Seegars had 6 and Jalen Gavin chipped in 2, plus 7 big assists for Gavin…Hill-Mais had 8 rebounds to lead the team in that department/category…..

Kishawn Pritchett and Hunter Seacat were the leaders for Lake Norman with 18 points a-piece….Davd Scott added 8 points, Trey Ford and Andrew Souther had 6 each for the Wildcats, while Louis Simms and Parker Jones chipped in 3 and 2 points respectively….Pritchett had 13 rebounds and he also gave out 6 assists for LN….

The NCHSAA West Regional All-Tournament team was made up of:
Ty Graves, Xavier Hill-Mais and Jeremy Harris from Page, plus Hunter Seacat, Davd Scott and tournament MVP Pritchett, from Lake Norman High School….

Page fell today, but they are on the way back up and they will be back bigger and better next season, at least that is the mindset you have to go with and it will be easier to buy into by Tuesday or Wednesday of next/this week…..

17 thoughts on “Down 17 points at halftime, Page Pirates battle back to take lead, but fall on buzzer-beating three-pointer by Lake Norman Wildcats’ Trey Ford

  1. Wow .. Really??… “Few bodies on the floor from exasperation”…. Far from “exaspiration” from the 1 I seen on the floor… Just pure DISAPPOINTMENT & being ROBBED of the win they well deserved…. Plan & simple……

  2. Nobody was robbed, bud. It was a great game. Take your loss and get ready for next year!

  3. Yeah Page got robbed. Video clearly shows a foul not to mention Fords WALK the refs didn’t call way before the buzzer & that’s why they got tge hell out dodge.

  4. There were for sure a few bodies on the floor and they sure didn’t want to leave that floor and who can blame them….

    A couple of questions for discussion would be the last shot and the three that Graves was fouled on….

    How long was the last shot? We have been hearing different distances…..Our thinking was the last shot was around 10 feet inside the halfcourt stripe and they were using s college court(UNCG Spartans’ court) and the college courts are 94×50….At 94 feet in length, that would make half court at 47 feet and if the shot came from 10 feet from inside halfcourt by Trey Ford that would make the shot coming from 37-40 feet…..

    Any thoughts on that distance????

    The other play that rings in the minds of those that want to know was the shot by Ty Graves, I think it was, where he nailed three and hit the floor in an attempt to draw the foul and go for the four point play….

    Whistle blows after the shot, but all that came out of it was the sign of a timeout by Lake Norman….

    Just a few of many thoughts on this one….

  5. I wish teams fans would except a loss with class, I remember when Page Girls beat Dudley’s Girls….Dudley was upset about a call late in the game. The Page fans ripped about how upset the Dudley fans were upset. The Refs looked at the replay and the call was made. We all want our local teams to win, but when they lose…..Just give the other team credit. Lake Norman won the first two quarters, Page fought like Champs to get back in it. Quarter 4 was a standstill !!! Page as well as other teams over the years got a call or two as well. As Duke & Syracuse in both their games. But the 2013 Page team, the 2009 Dudley team and the 2004 Dudley all loss on last second shots in the Regionals…..it hurts, but that is life.

  6. Page coach called a time out while the shooter was in motion. The referee blew the whistle when the timeout was requested, he just didn’t wait until the basket was made. No foul.

  7. While I am dissapointed the Pirates didn’t win. I am more dissapointed to pick up the paper and read James Abel complaining about the officials. While I wish some calls went the other way that didn’t determine the outcome of the game. Sitting in a 2-3 zone while Lake Norman rained 3 ball after 3 ball to gap it out in the 1st half to gain a 17pt lead. This why we don’t have a 4a state championship locally. It has nothing to do with the refs. Refs make bad calls at every level but they try their hardest and are human.

  8. Page boys or girls didn’t make it to their States this year. No way! All the talk, disrespect and commotion was for______________________?

    I hope the fans learn because they are the worse and they are always crying when they lose.

  9. Have not seen the hard copy of the News and Record, just the on-line edition and they have the same post on there that they had late Sunday afternoon…N&R’s Jeff Mills had his work up there pretty soon after the game was complete and he also had some pre-game on-line posts too and good stuff from Jeff…I usually see if after the fact or the event, but good stuff from Jeff, for sure,,,,

    Coach James Abell is not usually one to argue unless he has a case….He has a few things about this game on his mind the rest of can’t see, since we are not in the coach’s shoes…I have a feeling he has some good points and his breakdown is going way beyond just a few questionable calls…He has seen something that the rest of us are not completely aware of…You have the call with the reason for the call and you have the call with the part that goes beyond the reason and into the intent behind the calls…Very deep and beyond what we can all pull in here….It is not always just a lot of blah, blah blah, much more behind it than that….Many of us can’t go there, because that part of the well is too deep to go into…

    On a bit of different note and to my knowledge, it has not been touched upon on here or at the News and Record yet…..What about those Lake Norman students and the way they tried to rush the court and tore down that barricade on Sunday in effort to storm the court…Very excited bunch of kids and I guess you can say all is well that ends well and it ended well for them, but do you think they would have jumped the ‘Press Row’ if they could have gotten through there…

    Not sure about the correct spelling, probably need to go look this one up, but that was true Pandemoniuim right there….Lake Norman had a pretty wild student section…Lots of life preservers and swim gear for their theme….

  10. Here is the skinny on the Page-Lake Norman game from Bill Kiser at the Charlotte Observer….We try and give you everything we can and as much of that, as we can….

    CLICK HERE and it is from the Charlotte Observer on-line…

  11. There were three referee’s. Who is the “one” he is blaming for dictating the outcome of the game? If he’s questioning the last second shot, game film PROVES that the ball was in flight when the horn sounded. If he’s blaming the technical foul – I was sitting at the end line and heard what 14 said. He’d better be thankful the kid wasn’t ejected. The official had no choice but to give him a technical foul. Coach Abell has no argument whatsoever. Did they miss some calls? Sure. Did Abell keep his defense in a 2-3 zone while LN shot the lights out? Yep. Did Page players miss some free throws, jump shots, and 3-pointers? Yes again. It’s always easiest to blame someone else when we come up short. And Coach Abell is instilling THAT in our players.

  12. The game is over. Lets turn our attention to the andrews girls team since they are the last guilford county school left.

  13. I heard – I’ll bust your @**, *****. I don’t know if anything else was said after that, but I saw 2 of the refs charging in on that. You see and hear a lot sitting behind the basket. Just so happened to be on my side.

  14. When I say “I heard”…I don’t mean from another source. Sitting where I was at, I actually heard it.

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