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Fort Frye plays miracle minute in come-back win over Waterford

Bradford sinks 3 for improbable Fort Frye win

JORDAN HOLLAND The Marietta Times Fort Frye’s Grayson Schott (1) looks to pass as Waterford’s Russell Young defends during a high school boys basketball game Saturday in Beverly.

BEVERLY — Fort Frye trailed 49-41 with 1:01 left on the clock and needed everything to go right.

It did.

The Cadets outscored rival Waterford 14-5 over the final 45 seconds to claim an improbable 55-54 victory Saturday. Tyler Bradford’s 3-pointer from the top of the arc with eight-tenths of a second left capped the miracle minute.

“We just hit every single shot we needed to hit in the last minute,” Fort Frye head coach Eric Henniger laughed. “I told my guys, ‘If you just made your layups during the game you wouldn’t have to do that.'”

Bradford spent most of the game in foul trouble and had just two points before the game-winning 3.

“I knew I had to do something at the end,” said the Fort Frye senior. “My teammates fought for me the whole game and I knew I had to come up with a big play. Lucky shot, but it went in.”

Added Henniger, “The thing about Tyler is he has a tendency to do something like that. He tends to hit those big shots. He’s got a lot of confidence himself. That was a great shot.”

Bryce Hilverding, who led Waterford with 14 points, hit a pair of free throws at the 1:01 mark to put the Wildcats up eight.

On the other end, Grayson Schott, who scored a game-high 21 points, answered with a trey to make it 49-44 with 45.7 seconds left. Fort drained four 3-pointers in the last minute — two from Schott, one from Brady Schilling to make it 50-47 with 29.9 seconds remaining, and Bradford’s game-winner.

Waterford had chances to ice the game at the free throw line, but went 5-of-8 in the final minute and 15 for 27 overall. Fort Frye wasn’t much better, going just 1 for 7 from the charity stripe as both teams were playing their second game in as many nights.

Austin Pyatt hit 1-of-2 freebies before Brady Schilling’s driving layup got Fort Frye within 51-49 with 22 seconds left. Hilverding then was fouled and hit both of his free throw attempts, but Schott answered with another trey to make it a one-point game with 12.8 seconds to go.

Pyatt was fouled again and hit 1-of-2 to make it 54-52 with 11.2 ticks left.

That set up Bradford’s 3, the 12th of the game for the Cadets

“They’re pretty happy right now,” Henniger said of his players. “We needed a close win, and that type of fashion was icing on the cake. Give credit to Waterford. They played really well and came in and did everything right. We just happened to get lucky at the end.”

Schott was the player to score in double figures for the Cadets, but Tate Engle and Schilling added nine apiece.

“Grayson’s played back-to-back great games,” Henniger said. “He’s the main reason we were still in that game. And Tate came up huge down the stretch too. He hit several big 3s and made great plays on defense. Without those two doing what they did, Tyler wouldn’t have been able to make that shot.”

Luke Nelson dished out a game-high six assists for Fort Frye, which plays Linsly Tuesday at home.

Along with Hilverding’s 14, the Wildcats got 13 points from Travis Pottmeyer, 12 from Russell Young and a 10-point, 13-rebound double-double from Peyten Stephens. Waterford plays host to South Gallia Tuesday.

In a rivalry that has featured some memorable games over the years, Saturday’s affair will go down as one of the best.

“It just makes our whole season right now,” Bradford said. “We have so much momentum going forward. Having that game is going to be really nice.”

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