In the end, they weren’t ready to go home.
The top-seeded Lincoln boys basketball team didn’t do much right in the first half of its Public Schools “AA” semifinal matchup against No. 4 Curtis, but the Railsplitters refused to go down without a fight. The fight ended in a knockout, as Lincoln rallied down the stretch, grabbing a 72–58 victory and booking a return to the city championship game on March 11.
“It’s my last year, it’s Klay Ferguson’s last year, it’s Michael Reid’s last year. We didn’t want to go out like that,” said Lincoln senior guard Donald Cannon Flores. “They were up 11 at the end of the second quarter, we just had to get back and keep fighting.”
Curtis came out firing on all cylinders early, draining eight three-pointers in the first half. The Warriors canned buzzer-beater shots in the final seconds of both the first and second quarter.
“They were killing us on the threes,” said Ferguson, who finished with 26 points. “We had to just pick it up defensively. The pressure wasn’t there. But if we applied our pressure, we knew we were going to win this game.”
Lincoln refocused its energy in the second half, mounting full-court defensive pressure that took the wind out the Warriors’ sails.
“We locked down on defense and we stopped shooting threes,” said Railsplitters coach Dwayne “Tiny” Morton. “Man-to-man defense, no more trick defenses.”
Lincoln chipped away at the Curtis lead in the third quarter, and Flores opened up the fourth with his own six-point run. The Railsplitters took a 53–51 lead with 4:50 left on the clock.
“I was just thinking: ‘Never give up,’ ” said Flores, who racked up 17 points. “We started to play a lot of defense in the second half; just got our guys going.”
The Warriors tied the game once more on a pair of Samuel Majekodunmi free throws, but Lincoln refused to relinquish control. The Railsplitters squad, which had trailed by as many as 12 points, didn’t allow Curtis to score a single field goal in the final quarter.
Lincoln now turns its focus to revenge, seeking to take down Jefferson on March 11 in a rematch of last year’s Public Schools Athletic League championship. The Railsplitters fell in that game, 90–61, but vow to reverse that outcome this year.
“That’s payback,” Ferguson said. “They beat us by 31, we’ll beat them by 41. That’s a guarantee.”
