Holcomb secures homecoming win over Campbell in final seconds

After trading leads in the first half, the Holcomb Hornets narrowly avoided a homecoming upset against rival Campbell Friday night with a fourth quarter surge for a 54-52 victory.

As a standing tradition, the Hornets undertook a tough challenge for their homecoming night in facing off against Campbell. Holcomb (5-6) secured a much more decisive 62-49 win over Campbell (5-8) earlier this season at the Holcomb Invitational Tournament.

As it stands now, however, both teams are averaging 58 points per game while allowing between three points of one another. After Friday night, they’ve both won the same amount of games as well and their stats held much the same.

“We’re really close with them and the kids all know each other,” Holcomb head coach Michael Snider said. “It becomes a fun rivalry, and typically every year we’re each other’s homecoming games. It always seems like it’s a big time game and I’m just ecstatic that we were able to win.”

With nearly perfectly balanced scoring on Holcomb’s end, the Hornets found themselves up by one point, 14-13, to end the first quarter and down by seven points, 27-20, going into halftime.

Campbell’s Sam Bunting opened the second half with a 3-point shot before Holcomb’s Jacob Reeves-Crittendon answered with two of his own to kick off the beginnings of a Hornet comeback.

“Being down seven points at the half, I didn’t know how we would come out and respond in the third and early in the fourth, but the kids wanted it,” Snider said. “They wanted it bad. So they played extremely hard and that’s exactly what we’ve been talking about.”

“We had 20 points at the half, and that’s what’s so deflating because of how many good looks I thought we were getting,” he continued. “I told the kids at halftime ‘we’re going to start hitting shots, so don’t worry about that.’ It’s about our defense and our effort and the will to win.”

Holcomb outscored Campbell by just one point, 14-13, in the third quarter propelled almost entirely by 3-point plays by Dylan Bradshaw, Noah Kenner and Jacob Reeves-Crittendon.

Campbell's Duncan Hicks (15) attempts a shot against Holcomb on the Hornets' homecoming night on Friday.Christian Johnson, Delta Dunklin Democrat

While that wasn’t enough to cut the Hornets’ deficit, those shots were laying the groundwork for what was to come in the fourth quarter.

After an intensely physical game by both sides from start to finish, Holcomb’s defense stepped up to not just take the pressure off its offense, but Holcomb’s campaign on defensive rebounding led to just enough of an edge to pull out a win.

“I still don’t think we shot it very well, but we did hit some big shots in some big moments,” Snider said. “We ran our offense and our sets pretty well at times, and we got some really good looks all night long. I was just really happy with the effort and the intensity that we gave.”

Typically sporting an evenly scoring offense, not only did Holcomb outscore Campbell 20-12 in the fourth quarter, but they also took the rare advantage of the hot hands of just a couple of players to secure the W.

Holcomb’s Noah Kenner kicked off the fourth quarter with two true free throws, and after two by Campbell’s Ben Rowland as well, Kenner knocked back two consecutive 3-point shots drawing the eruption of the packed Holcomb gymnasium.

“Noah Kenner got hot there,” Snider said. “When you have a balanced scoring like we typically do every night, sometimes when someone gets hot you just ride them for a little bit. Noah got hot, kept knocking down shots, so we made a point of emphasis to get him the ball in that stretch.”

A 3-point shootout turned into a free throw shootout as the seconds dwindled, and ultimately a missed Holcomb free throw and Campbell rebound gave the Camels the ball with 3.4 seconds remaining.

In an attempt to push the game into overtime, one final, albeit missed, Campbell layup that garnered an entire gym to simultaneously gasp led to the two point victory for Holcomb to win on homecoming night.

Noah Kenner led the Hornets in scoring with 16 points, followed by Jacob Reeves-Crittendon with 13, Braiden Burk with nine and Dylan Bradshaw with eight.

Ben Rowland paced the Camels with 19 points, followed by Duncan Hicks with 10 and Sam Bunting with eight.

Holcomb will be back in action next Tuesday as they host conference rival Cooter on Tuesday and travel to Neelyville next Friday. Campbell travels to Risco on Monday and Portageville on Tuesday.