‘Basketball gods’ favor Lexington in battle between big cities’ top squads

Henry Clay’s boys’ basketball team opened some eyes across Kentucky on Tuesday night.

The Blue Devils, ranked 14th in the latest Cantrall Ratings and unranked in the most recent Associated Press poll, upset Trinity — ranked second by both of those parties — 52-50 at home, snapping a two-game losing streak to the Shamrocks.

The two programs — currently the highest-ranked teams in their respective cities — have played at least once each season since the 2012-13 campaign; Henry Clay improved to 3-5 over that period.

After taking a brief lead at the end of the first quarter and trading it with Trinity in the early minutes of the second, Henry Clay from the 4:14 mark of the second period didn’t regain the advantage — 48-47 — until Harris Hawkins hit a three-pointer from the corner off a Marques Warrick assist with 1:20 to play in the contest. Keaston Brown went 1-for-2 at the free-throw line to extend the lead by a point before Warrick came up with a steal on the other end, which he turned into an and-one conversion at the rim for a 51-47 lead with 17 seconds left.

Warrick missed the free throw and Stan Turnier on the other side hit a triple — his third of the night — to pull the Shamrocks within 51-50 with 11 seconds to go. Brown again hit one of two free-throw tries with 7 seconds to play. Turnier got a shot off from the corner as the horn sounded, but it drew iron.

“We played extremely good defense,” Henry Clay Coach Daniel Brown said. “I went in to halftime, look at the score and it’s 22-18 and I said, ‘Our offense wasn’t very good but the defense was very good.’ And you look at the shots, we took good shots, they just didn’t go. So I just wanted to continue that. I thought we made a few plays down the stretch that both the offense and defense just carried over. So, just a real good win to beat a first-class team.”

Keaston Brown finished with 18 points and four rebounds. Hawkins had 16 points, nine assists and three assists.

Warrick, the Blue Devils’ leading scorer, struggled from the field — he was 4-for-15 overall and 1-for-7 from behind the arc — and had only 10 points but Daniel Brown was impressed by his ability to shrug off a shaky shooting night and come up big when it mattered in the waning moments.

“Ques struggled a little tonight but he kept playing,” Daniel Brown said. “We kept telling him, ‘You just do your thing, man.’ I tell all these guys, ‘Do your thing, keep playing basketball and the basketball gods will work it out for you.’ That’s part of the game.”