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Vikings stun Dover 70-69 with wild comeback

February 9, 2017

Faced with a double-digit deficit in the waning moments of a game, a typical basketball team accepts its fate. Buses are warmed up, stats are padded, subs are called in, and the clock is mercifully dribbled out. 

The Cape Henlopen Vikings are anything but typical. 

Down 13 points to host Dover with 3:30 left in the fourth quarter, the Cape boys conjured up a comeback that can only be described as supernatural. Junior forward Ian Robertson tipped in a missed free throw at the buzzer to put an exclamation point on a furious rally and lifted the Vikings a 70-69 victory that head coach Steve Re called “a huge character-building win.”

When Javon Peace converted a put-back to give the Senators a 61-48 lead - their biggest of the night - at the 3:30 mark, Cape looked destined for defeat. The ice-cold Vikings hadn’t led since the opening minute of the third period and had given up 30 points to Dover freshman sensation Eden Davis. Garbage time looked like a foregone conclusion.

Cape responded by pouring in 22 points over the final three-plus minutes, as it hit eight of its last 13 shots from the floor and forced six late Dover turnovers. Robertson kickstarted the rally by draining a long three from the right wing. After a Dover miss, Robertson struck again from deep, cutting the margin to seven at the 2:49 mark. The Dover advantage held at seven until junior forward Randy Rickards hit a free throw with 1:34 remaining. His second attempt went long, but senior guard Jerry Harden tipped it in to cut the margin to 65-61. Fellow senior Rasheed Woods made a steal on Dover’s next possession, and freshman guard Cory Barnes rattled in a runner on the fast break.

Davis answered for the Senators by hitting one of two free throws, but freshman guard Sh’Kai Chandler made a contested lay-in to make it a 66-65 game with 52 ticks on the clock. After Davis sank two more from the charity stripe, Harden got a friendly roll on a 10-footer. Down 68-67 at the 15-second mark, Cape fouled Stefan Rush-Wilson, who could only convert one of his two free throws. The Vikings got the ball at the 0:03 mark with a chance to tie or win the game. Rickards caught an inbound pass on the run, pump-faked and let fly from about 22 feet away. His shot skidded off the back of the rim, but a referee whistled a foul on his defender and awarded him three free throws with 0.9 seconds left.               

Rickards, who had connected on just nine of 20 free throws in the game to that point, stepped up and drained the first before missing the second. The Vikings needed their star forward to make his third attempt to force overtime, but it bounced high off the rim and out.

That’s when Robertson did the impossible.

Harden got a finger or two on the ball and slapped it off the bottom of the rim directly to Robertson, who instantaneously “reverse Mikan-ed” it toward the basket with one hand. His mini-hook put-back hit the backboard and ripped through the net as the horn sounded, turning tragedy into triumph in milliseconds. The Cape bench mobbed Robertson beneath the basket as a rowdy Dover crowd fell silent. 

“Jerry went up and tried to tip it in,” Robertson said. “It came off his hand right to me and I just put it up with my left hand. I do it every day - we do that drill in practice all the time - so at this point it’s just muscle memory. It fell to me, and I knew what to do with it.”

Rickards finished with 24 points, 13 rebounds and four steals for Cape (11-5, 8-2 Henlopen North), which earned its third consecutive victory and won for the seventh time in eight games. Robertson scored 15 of his 19 points in the second half, including eight in the fourth quarter. The versatile big man rounded out his line with nine boards, three assists and four blocks. Barnes added 12 points and four assists, notching his eighth straight game in double figures.

Davis poured in 34 points on 8-for-11 shooting to lead Dover (7-10, 3-7 Henlopen North). The cat-quick freshman made four of his five three-point attempts, including three bombs in a third period dominated by the Senators, and converted 14 of 18 free throws on the night. Peace pitched in with 12 points and three steals.

Re couldn’t say enough about his team’s perseverance.

“We just kept playing hard. We kept plugging away and fighting … We had guys coming in and out left and right and just stepping up in different situations. We missed shots all night - all kinds of shots … But we just kept playing hard, especially when things weren’t going our way … It was a great win for us.”

Rickards echoed his coach’s feelings.

“We fought all night. I thought the whole team was great. This is the type of team you wanna be on - we’re a bunch of fighters. We did not wanna lose this one.” 

Robertson stressed the importance of the win to his team’s postseason aspirations.

“If we’d lost this game, our season could’ve easily gone downhill,” he said after the Vikings narrowly averted a loss that would have hurt their state tournament seeding. “A win like this puts us in the right direction.”

Cape got six points, five rebounds and two key steals from Harden, while Chandler and Woods contributed four and three points, respectively. Senior forward Robert Mitchell added a first-half bucket to close the Cape scorebook.

The Vikings shot a woeful 12-for-29 at the free-throw line (41 percent), squandering countless chances to close the gap late in the game. Cape atoned for some of those misses by outrebounding Dover 38-26 and grabbing a season-high 21 offensive boards.

With the victory, the Vikings swept the season series with the Senators for the first time since the 2008-09 season.

Cape is back in action Friday, Feb. 10, when it gets a visit from an always-tough Concord squad.

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