CUMBERLAND — Fort Hill’s season came down to an overtime period for a second straight game. Once again, the Sentinels would not be denied.
Jacob Bone and Gamil Daniels were clutch at the foul line to give Fort Hill a four-point lead in the final minute, but a turnover and a missed free throw gave Mountain Ridge a window down the stretch to tie the game.
However, Fort Hill got stops when it needed to, forcing a miss at the basket before Mountain Ridge threw it away in the final seconds to lift the top-seeded Sentinels to a 59-56 overtime win over the second-seeded Miners for the Class 1A West Region I title.
“Super proud of the kids. I’ve been super proud of them all year long,” Fort Hill head coach Thad Burner said. “We’ve been gritty. We’ve found a way to win.
“We’ve done some things in the last part of the season that we didn’t do early on, like make free throws and get some timely stops or timely rebounds. We just did enough to find a way to win.”
The region championship is Fort Hill’s third in a row. The last two times, it advanced to the Final Four and was ultimately crowned the area champion.
Fort Hill got off to a 1-5 start, but two months later, the Sentinels are once again the region’s last team standing.
“It’s a credit to the kids,” Burner said. “They’ve battled all year long. We haven’t been great, but they never let that define who they were. When push came to shove, we’ve played.”
Fort Hill (14-9) had three scorers finish in double figures in Gamil Daniels (18), Jabril Daniels (16) and Liam Hamilton (11).
The Sentinels’ bench shined too, outscoring the Miners’ 14-3.
Mountain Ridge (14-10) was paced offensively by Owen McGeady (17), Cameron Breighner (15) and Ian Duncan (13).
The Miners battled to force overtime, but deficits of 17-12, 32-23 and 47-39 after the first three quarters ended up coming back to bite them.
“We dug ourselves in a hole,” Mountain Ridge head coach Tim Nightengale said. “We didn’t do what we needed to do in the first half. A tale of two halves. If we played the way we did in the second half, maybe it’s a different ball game.
“We didn’t rebound the ball well at all in the first half, and that’s inexcusable. We talked about that at halftime. There’s no way we should be five defensive rebounds to their seven offensive rebounds in the first half.”
Both teams were clutch at the end of regulation at the free-throw line. Gamil Daniels broke a tie at 49 with a pair of foul shots with 56 seconds left, and Breighner answered with two makes at the charity stripe with 31.7 remaining.
Fort Hill missed the potential winner at the buzzer, and for the second straight game, the Sentinels went to overtime.
Like Fort Hill’s 62-58 OT win over Southern in the semifinals Tuesday when Landen Sweitzer got a pair of crucial shots to fall, Bone rose to the occasion Thursday.
Bone hadn’t made more than one free throw in a game all year and was 2 for 7 overall — he made 3 of 4 in the final 1:08 of overtime.
“We’ve kind of gotten that all year with different guys stepping up, giving us a game,” Burner said. “Jacob also had 10 rebounds. He hadn’t been in that type of situation much at the end of the game. To step up and make those free throws, great job by him.”
Mountain Ridge went 0 for 2 at the free-throw line on the possession after Bone gave Fort Hill a 56-54 lead.
More than a second seemed to come off the clock after the whistle blew on the foul — the clock ultimately stopped at 42.6 seconds — but the clock went unchanged after a conference by the referees.
“Nobody knew,” Nightengale said. “I felt like there were two seconds that came off the clock. That clock kept running when the whistle blew. I can’t control that. We have three officials that didn’t see that happen.”
After the teams traded two points each, Fort Hill turned it over with 17.7 left to give Mountain Ridge a window, but the shot underneath missed.
Bone split a pair of foul shots on the other end to put the margin at 59-56, giving the Miners one final chance with a little more than five seconds to go the length of the floor.
Mountain Ridge threw the ball out of bounds, and the Fort Hill celebration was on.
“We knew it was going to come down to defense,” Jabril Daniels said. “They have great scorers over there. We knew if we wanted to win this game, we were going to have to give everything we have on defense.”
The first quarter was one of runs. Fort Hill started up 7-2, Mountain Ridge answered with an 8-0 flurry and the Sentinels responded with an 8-0 burst of their own.
Mountain Ridge climbed to within three points late in the second quarter, but Fort Hill again closed strong, using a 6-0 run to enter halftime with a nine-point cushion.
“We just played as a team,” Gamil Daniels said of Fort Hill’s first-half offensive execution. “When you move the ball, you get open shots, and we just kept moving the ball around. We just knew they can’t run the floor with us.”
Mountain Ridge continued to claw back with two- or three-bucket runs. Every time, Fort Hill answered.
The Miners cut it to three points at the end of the third quarter.
Daniels finished through contact, plus the foul with 0.6 seconds remaining in the period for an eight-point lead.
The trend continued into the fourth quarter.
While Mountain Ridge was able to force a tie late for overtime, Fort Hill didn’t trail once during the second half.
“We couldn’t get over the hump,” Nightengale said. “I told them in a timeout, ‘We can’t keep trading baskets. We need to get a stop and a basket, we need to string some stops together and be efficient on offense.’”
Though Mountain Ridge came up just one overtime period short of the school’s first boys region championship, the season was a successful one for the Miners.
Mountain Ridge ended the season with 14 wins in 18 games after an 0-6 start.
“A lot of teams could’ve bagged it and said we aren’t any good,” Nightengale said. “They didn’t. We came into the new year, and we were a different team. … They came to work every day. It was the most fun part of the day, coming in and having practice with these guys.”
Fort Hill, seeded eighth in the state tournament, will head to No. 1 Cambridge-South on Saturday at 4 p.m. in the quarterfinals.
Cambridge eliminated Fort Hill in the Final Four last year.
“It’s an opportunity,” Burner said. “It’s an opportunity to hopefully get back to the Final Four.”