PUEBLO
Most Ignacio High School boys basketball games this season were decided long before the final two minutes.
Not the Bobcats’ 59-50 win over Lutheran in the third-place game of the Colorado High School Activities Association Class 2A Boys Basketball State Championships on Saturday at Massari Arena on the CSU-Pueblo campus.
IHS (25-1) led 51-48 with 1 minute, 34 seconds left and hit 8-of-10 attempts from the free throw line to seal a season-ending victory.
“They iced the game and put it away for us,” said IHS senior Clayton Jefferson, son of Robert and Teena Jefferson. “We preach free throws.”
Jefferson tied for the team lead with six made free throws with Wyatt Hayes and scored 13 points.
Hayes led the team with 22 points and four assists.
They combined with Adison Jones’ 14-point, 10-rebound double-double to score 49 of the Bobcats’ 59 points.
All three put their shooting talents on display early.
The Bobcats scored 21 points in the first quarter after only scoring two in the opening quarter against Sanford in Friday’s semifinal game.
“Against the zone, we had to shoot early, we had to hit some early to get them out of it,” IHS head coach Chris Valdez said. “Otherwise, they would have stuck in (the zone) all game long.”
No. 1 IHS carried a three-point lead through halftime and never let No. 2 Lutheran (19-8) tie the game or take the lead in the second half.
The Lions cut the deficit to three points at the 1:34 mark, but they never were able to even the score.
“When they needed buckets down the stretch, they got them,” Lutheran head coach Ryan Bredow said.
A pair of Lutheran players fouled out in the final 3:26 in a game that featured 38 total fouls.
A trio of Bobcats finished with four fouls, but none of them were disqualified.
Valdez left Jefferson in the game with 3:14 left after he picked up his fourth foul, and he stayed there until exiting with 17.5 seconds left to a hug from his head coach.
All six IHS seniors saw the floor in the final minute, as the Bobcats clinched their best finish at the state tournament since a loss to Lutheran in the 2010 state championship game. They set a school record for wins in a season.
“We wanted to win this game for our seniors,” said Hayes, son of Cindy and Tim Hayes. “They’re important to us, and we wanted to send them out on a good note.”
Despite losing those six seniors to graduation, IHS will return two starters in Hayes, a sophomore, and Jones, a junior, and will keep bench players such as Nicholas Herrera and Anthony Manzanares.
“Off the bat, we’re a top-10 team (next year),” said Valdez, who has qualified the Bobcats for the Great Eight in seven of his 14 seasons as the IHS head coach. “How we develop and build over the summer is going to decide whether we’re a top-five team. We can build on that, hopefully to win it all. That’s always going to be the goal.”
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