Hello again! Sweet Sixteen Cinderella earns another shot to knock off No. 1 team.
Warren Central never cracked the top 25 of Dave Cantrall’s Rating the State, and was never ranked in the Associated Press top 10.
Now it’s one of the final four teams left standing. Warren Central defeated Madisonville, 66-62, to advance to the semifinals of the 102nd Whitaker Bank/KHSAA Boys’ Sweet Sixteen on Friday night.
Warren Central in the fourth quarter held Madisonville star Kenny White scoreless and to only three field-goal attempts after he scored 27 points on 13 shots through the first three periods.
The Maroons led by 11, 50-39, in the third quarter before Warren Central scored the last nine points of the frame to pull within two heading into the fourth. The western Kentucky squads exchanged leads throughout the fourth before a Dre Boyd layup gave Warren Central the lead for good with 1:15 left.
Tre Pillow went 4-for-4 from the free-throw line in the final 23 seconds to seal the deal.
“They got down 11 and kept fighting,” Dragons Coach William Unseld said. “I told ’em at halftime, ‘We’re down six and they shot unbelievable, and for us to not be down 20 tells me we’re gonna win this basketball game.’ And we got down 11 and I told ’em the same thing, ‘They’re making shots and we aren’t.’ I said, ‘If we start making some shots and getting some stops, we got a chance to win the basketball game.’ And we did that.”
Turnovers favored Warren Central, eight to Madisonville’s 17. Boyd had 15 points, seven rebounds, four steals and three assists to lead Warren Central. White, in addition to his game-high point total, finished with 10 rebounds, two assists, two blocks and two steals for the Maroons.
The Dragons now will get a shot at knocking off top-ranked Scott County, the team that eliminated it in last year’s semifinals.
“It got away from us,” Unseld said of last season’s bout, a 75-46 wire-to-wire victory for the Cardinals. “It was a 12- or 13-point lead going into the fourth and we just took off a little bit. We just didn’t make shots and they were unbelievable that night. Their first two rounds they didn’t make shots, so we were kind of hoping they wouldn’t make it again.”
Unseld said his staff would dive into its film on Scott County and again try to play Cinderella on Kentucky high school basketball’s biggest stage.
“Of course, (Michael) Moreno’s unbelievable, he’s gonna get his,” Unseld said. “(Diablo) Stewart’s special. The guy that hurt us last year is Covington. He just made shot after shot. We’ve just gotta make sure that when they get shots, they’re contested, and the biggest thing more than any one player is getting back in transition defense. They’re unbelievable at getting that thing out of the net and throwing it up the floor.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2019 at 10:09 PM.
