Schultz leads Huskies to overtime victory

By Jeff Yoder
Posted 2/10/21

After a lopsided loss on Tuesday night, Highland junior Chase Schultz took the court on Wednesday determined to will his team to victory. 

Schultz scored all but four of the Huskies’ 19 …

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Schultz leads Huskies to overtime victory

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After a lopsided loss on Tuesday night, Highland junior Chase Schultz took the court on Wednesday determined to will his team to victory. 

Schultz scored all but four of the Huskies’ 19 first-half points and added seven more in the fourth quarter and overtime as Highland came back from a 13-point deficit to defeat Lone Tree 56-55. 

Connor Grinstead broke the tie with 29 seconds left in overtime with a pair of clutch free throws. Lone Tree went 1-2 at the line, and then the Huskies missed a pair but Schultz grabbed the offensive rebound and held it until the buzzer sounded.    

“We lost a tough one last night,” Schultz said. “And since that game, I’ve thought, I have to light a fire somehow. Because we needed to win this game.”

Schultz finished 10-15 from the floor for 25 points with 13 rebounds. He scored nine points over the first six minutes as Highland took an 11-3 lead.

“I needed to come out, and I needed to be a leader as much as I could,” Schultz said. 

The Huskies were down by 10 before Schultz scored through contact and added a free throw with 6:30 left in the game. The Huskies went on a 6-0 run over the final five minutes of regulation. 

Tyler Bell gave Lone Tree a brief lead in overtime, but Schultz tied the game at 54-54 with 2:26 left and Grinstead’s free throws gave Highland the win. 

Highland coach Bill Zywiec explained that the Huskies started out in a 2-3 zone defense because he was concerned about their conditioning with so many kids coming off of covid quarantine recently.  

“We cannot afford to pick up a bunch of fouls early when we had kids that haven’t played a lot of minutes,” he said.  “We got to that fourth quarter and we were able to go man-to-man. I think we’re pretty decent man-to-man team, but we’ve got to be smart when we play it. I thought our pressure on the ball, picking them up full court in our in our trap defense, kind of sped the game up to our advantage.”

Overall, Lone Tree turned the ball over fewer times than Highland (23 to 26), and had more offensive rebounds (17 to 9), but the Lions struggled in both areas during the fourth quarter. 

“I thought we played not to lose instead of playing to win,” Lone Tree coach Tom Squiers said. “We have that 13-point lead and they cut it to nine and all our guys just kept watching the clock. I guess part of it’s that we’re just not used to winning right now. We turned the ball over 15 times in the fourth quarter. We gave up some big offensive rebounds on free throws, and they scored on them. That was the story, in the fourth quarter, we just didn’t finish it out.”

While Schultz carried the load for Highland, it was Adam Knock who came off the bench and stepped up for the Lions. Knock hit a pair of 3-pointers and finished a 3-point play during a 13-2 run that got the Lions back in the game in the second quarter.

Drew Gaulley also made two from behind the arc as Lone Tree held the Huskies without a field goal over the last 5:38 of the first half and took a 25-19 lead into halftime. Then Aidan Forbes made a pair of 3-pointers and the Lion lead grew to 13 points with 4:53 left in the third. He finished 3-6 from the 3-point line for nine points.

Knock finished with 16 points, seven rebounds, and four assists. Cade Shield was 7-8 from the free throw line, he had nine points, 11 rebounds, and three assists. Bell scored six and had nine rebounds. Alex Viner had four steals and three assists. 

Tristan Stokes scored the last seven points of the third quarter for Highland. He had 11 points, six rebounds, and four steals on his first day back from quarantine. Grinstead finished with 12 points, three assists, and three steals.

“We had a lot of guys that just really bought in there in the second half and were bound and determined to get the win,” Schultz said. “And I think that was a huge thing for us in getting that win tonight.”