On senior night, two seniors came up big to give the Sobrato boys basketball team a dramatic 47-46 win Wednesday.
“Credit to my guys. We had a tough stretch in the third quarter. We turned the ball over too much and our spacing was bad. We were too excited for senior night, I think,” said coach Lee Washington. “Once they settled down, those guys really wanted to win tonight.”
Karl Mann tipped in the go ahead bucket with less than 30 seconds left in the game and Max Mosgrove pulled down a key rebound on the other end to clinch the game.
When the buzzer sounded, the players came together at mid court cheering as the fans roared in the Bulldog Gym.
“We came out here, we all crashed the rebounds, and gladly it came in my hands in stead of one of them and I got the tip in,” Mann said of his game winning shot. “On defense I told them we had to play tough and we had to play our best set of defense all year right now, and that’s what we did.”
Mann finished with a team-leading 14 points and eight rebounds. Mosgrove followed with nine and nine.
The sequence capped a turnaround for the Bulldogs who saw Pioneer go on a 13-2 run in the first quarter who never led after that point.
Sobrato clawed its way back in the second quarter and finally tied things up in the third, but could never get the go ahead shot to fall.
The back and forth looked to be over at the start of the fourth when Pioneer’s John Nowell hit a 3 to put the Mustangs up 38-35. Free throws from Mosgrove and Tim Givens tied the game a second time, but Pioneer answered with three points of its own and eventually retook a 43-40 lead.
Givens finished with nine points off the bench, including five in the fourth quarter.
That’s when Givens hit a 3 to tie the game.
But it was short lived as Nowell hit his second 3 of the quarter, but it was the last points Pioneer scored.
“The whole game we were basically down, but we never gave up and that was the important thing,” Mosgrove said. “We wanted this win so bad.”
Sobrato pulled within one with a little more than a minute to play when Kristian Maldia came away with a steal that set up the final sequence of the game.
With less than 30 seconds left in the game, Mann went up to tip in a miss by Bryce Shore to put Sobrato up by one.
“I was on these for a little bit in the first half, but then the second half, the third quarter, I was down. I couldn’t get my shots to fall,” Mann said. “Then coach told me to make an adjustment and they fed me the ball it just got me hot.”
Washington said he told his team they had a foul to give and a timeout left if they needed it. It turned out the Bulldogs didn’t.
After a Pioneer timeout, Anthony Ortega had a good look at the basket with eight second left, but the shot bounce off the rim.
Former Bulldog Chris Turner pulled down the offensive board in the paint and forced a shot that banged out.
“Credit to Christ Turner and those guys, they gave multiple maximum efforts. It made me nervous as all heck because I’ve seen enough plays and I’ve been on the wrong end of those where a little put back at the end could change the game,” Washington said.
Mosgrove won the battle for the scramble to clinch the game.
“It was a big scramble. We knew we had to box out, so we just tried to put a body on someone. We just pogo sticked up and just try to get it,” Mosgrove said.
Sobrato had to fight back in a game where the Bulldogs led 9-3 in the very beginning and forced Pioneer into turnovers in its first two possessions. But Sobrato committed six turnovers and trailed 16-11 after the first.
Led my Mann’s six points in the second, Sobrato outscored Pioneer 14-11 going into the half.
The Bulldogs held the Mustangs to eight points in the third to tie the game going to the final frame.
“We’re tough. We’re tough mentally and physically,” Washington said. “We know how good he is. A lot of times, too, when a team gets a couple of dunks, sometimes it can change the completion of the game where we can get in a hole and cry for ourselves, but there was no pity party.”
Sobrato will have to turn around quickly from the emotional win to having to play Live Oak Friday to close out the regular season at the Acorn Gym.
“We’re going to let this win carry on tonight, and then tomorrow at practice we’ll completely forget about it,” Mann said. “We’ll work hard in practice, then Friday, we’ll come out like we did today and show Live Oak that we can sweep them and we can still play hard no matter what.”
Tip off against Live Oak is scheduled for 7 p.m.
