Through the first half of Friday night’s Conference Indiana boys basketball matchup, Southport was giving the Columbus North offense fits.
The Cardinals held the Bull Dogs’ three leading scorers — Nick Schiavello, Blake Barker and Reese Harmon — all without a point in the first two quarters and took a 21-14 lead into the break.
North sprung to life in the third quarter and then made just enough plays in a back-and-fourth final period to pull out a 49-48 victory.
“We just had confidence,” Schiavello said. “We’ve faced deficits before, and we’ve overcome them. We stayed calm.”
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Schiavello scored all 19 of his points in the second half to lead the Bull Dog comeback. His last points came on a 3-pointer with 2:12 remaining that gave North (21-4, 3-0) a 44-42 lead.
“My teammates had confidence in me,” Schiavello said. “They told me to keep being aggressive and keep taking it to the hole. I just made some shots, and we really built off it and played really well in that second half.”
After the Cardinals (8-7, 1-2) tied the game, Trenton Kelley drilled a 3-pointer to give the Bull Dogs the lead for good at 47-44 with 1:13 left. But it was far from over.
Southport’s Brian Miller scored on a driving layup to cut the lead to one before Reese Harmon converted a one-and-one with 21 seconds remaining to push the lead back to 49-46. North coach Paul Ferguson then elected to foul the Cardinals instead of allowing a potential game-tying 3-pointer, and Brevin Jefferson converted a one-and-one with 7.1 seconds left.
Schiavello missed the front end of a one-and-one with 6.5 seconds remaining, and Southport grabbed the rebound and called a timeout with 3.7 seconds left. Following two more timeouts, the Cardinals got the ball to midcourt, but a halfcourt-heave was well off the mark.
“I thought the second half, we had great contributions off the bench in key moments, and we just made plays down the stretch,” Ferguson said.
Southport came out in a triangle-and-two defense on Barker and Harmon and built an early 11-2 lead. The Bull Dogs then scored the final 10 points of the first quarter to go up 12-11.
The Cardinals then outscored North 10-2 in the second quarter to take the 21-14 advantage.
“We had a tough start, and then we battled back at the end of the first (quarter) and I thought we were fine,” Ferguson said. “But we were just flat the second quarter. We missed a couple of shots, and Southport had a great game plan, and they executed it very well in the first half.”
Patrick McKinley and Trenton Kelley — the two senior starters — combined for all 14 of North’s first-half points. McKinley had nine of those, with four coming on a pair of rim-rattling dunks.
“They were guarding Blake and Reese really hard in that first half,” McKinley said. “Trenton and I stepped up and had to take the ball to the hole. They stayed out on our shooters, and we couldn’t get anything on the outside, so we had to take it to the basket and score.”
McKinley finished with 11 points, while Kelley added 10. Schiavello led the Bull Dogs with six rebounds.
The win was the sixth in a row for North and allows the Bull Dogs to keep pace with Bloomington South in the conference title chase.
“It’s huge,” McKinley said. “We have three games in four days this week, so we just have to keep the momentum going. We’re 2-0 so far.”
