HYANNIS — With just 0.004 tenths of one second left on the game clock, Jatayvin Crayton came through.
With the score tied 60-60 and both teams in the double bonus, the last thing the Dennis-Yarmouth Dolphins or host Barnstable Red Raiders wanted was to commit a foul but Barnstable did just that as time was about to expire and the game had been headed, it seemed, into overtime.
Dennis-Yarmouth’s LK Metz notched another double-double last night to pace his Dolphins to a 62-60 comeback win on the road in Hyannis.
Sean Walsh/capecod.com sports
Enter the Dolphins’ Crayton, a player who had earlier in the season been on the junior varsity squad.
Crayton buried both free throws in true Hollywood fashion and gave the Dolphins a 62-60 win and clean sweep of the Red & White for the season.
Barnstable falls to 6-9 while Dennis-Yarmouth is now 7-8 and has already clinched a postseason tournament berth. Barnstable still sits in position to make the postseason if it wins the Old Colony League title but must go through Bridgewater-Raynham and Dartmouth next week to do so. The Red Raiders face Falmouth tomorrow on the road at 5:00 pm. The D-Y Dolphins — who this week lost starter and one of the team’s top scorers, Jake Metz — face Marshfield, Martha’s Vineyard and Sandwich next week in the team’s final three regular season games. All three of those opponents are formidable.
The score could have been infinitely different and the game might not have gone down to the wire but neither team produced well at the free throw line in 50 combined attempts. Barnstable went 10-20 from the line and Dennis-Yarmouth went 18-30.
Regardless, D-Y senior captain LK Metz paved the way for his team once again as the adept ball-handler and top gun from the field fired in a game-high 21 points while pulling down 16 rebounds in yet another of a long string of double-doubles this season. Metz’s rebounding this season alone places him among the apex of all high school point guards on the Cape, bar none and even the Barnstable head coach Chuck Kipnes could only defer to the opposing player with the utmost respect.
“It was a great win for D-Y,” Kipnes said. “LK is the king.”
Dennis-Yarmouth head coach Rich Dalrymple — a former two-time Barnstable basketball captain in his high school days — said he was proud of his boys for pulling this one out with just a fraction of one second left on the clock. He credited junior forward Donta Tyler with playing a spectacular game (Tyler had eight points) and, of course, Metz.
D-Y’s Dillon Grant added 10 points and Kenny Dorr poured in 12 points to bolster the Dolphin attack.
Barnstable juniors Nate Balthazard and Eric Holzman were the Red Raiders’ high scorers, both with 13 points on the night, but the Red & White were without senior captain Elijah Baptiste, the leading scorer on the Barnstable squad.
“We had Baptiste in street clothes,” Kipnes said, and added that it was a team issue that prevented the sure-handed top gun from suiting up last night. “And we had no one on the floor for loose balls. Mistakes everywhere.”
Nevertheless, Barnstable staged an early, 17-13 lead after the first quarter and maintained that spread through the intermission at 31-28.
Dennis-Yarmouth, though, staged a comeback in the third quarter, tying the game at 41-41, and thanks in large part to a 6-6 display at the free throw line plus a bucket from Metz, as well as Crayton’s first bucket of the game and four points from Grant.
In the fourth frame, things were deadlocked at 19-19 (60-60) until Crayton drained the freebies for the win.
— Sean Walsh is the sports editor for www.capecod.com. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @coachwalshccbm
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