Jackson wins defensive duel, advances to C6D1 final

It came down to the other team taking the last shot, but the Jackson boy’s basketball team outlasted Lindbergh in a district semifinal, 38-37 on Friday night.

The Indians trailed by as many as seven in the third quarter, falling behind 21-14 to open the second half, but rallied all the way back before junior guard Blayne Harris hit two free throws to go from down a point to up one with 5.4 seconds left in the game.

“I knew down the stretch my team was gonna need me,” Harris said. “I had to step up and just hit free throws. I'm glad our team stuck together and fought there. This is a big team win.”

In total, Harris took the backseat in scoring while a trio of seniors combined for 26 of Jackson’s 38 total points.

Senior post Clayton Ernst led all scorers in the game with 14 points, dominating the paint in the slim victory. Meanwhile, the senior guard pairing of Kaed Winborne and Steven Schneider scored six points each.

On top of his 14 points, Ernst completed a double-double effort by notching 17 rebounds in the win. Matched up against a 6-foot-10 center and another 6-foot-7 forward, Ernst had his work cut out for him for 32 minutes.

The 6-foot-8 standout made his mark, however, hitting a 3-pointer in the first quarter and making six field goals to lead Jackson offensively.

“I just feel like we executed our offense the best we could, even though we weren't shooting very well,” Ernst said. “We got the good shots to fall that could fall for us. As a team, we were totally locked in, and we were all on the same page. That really drove us.”

Winborne took a spill while his team sat in a big hole in the third quarter, but eventually checked back into the game just a few minutes later before working out of a pick-and-roll set with Ernst to notch a critical bucket to trim the Lindbergh lead to one.

With potential implications of the matchup being Winborne’s last prep game of his Jackson career, the Webster signee came up big in a tight defensive matchup.

“The blood was pumping, adrenaline was going,” Winborne said. “We got a couple really big stops defensively and played good defensively the whole game. That's kind of what drove our second half – how we could score the ball because not much of it was going in the first half.”

The Jackson win propels the Indians into their third matchup of the postseason, facing off against the Kirkwood Pioneers in the district championship.

With a trip to the quarterfinals on the line for coach Kory Thoma in his first season leading the Indians, he didn’t shy away from acknowledging what’s still ahead.

“Kirkwood is a very, very good team,” Thoma said. “Very well-coached team. Very athletic, very senior-led team. We'll have to step up and we’ll have to have different guys score. But yeah, we're looking to put more points on the board and play with Kirkwood.”