The thought went through Bill Brandsma’s head as he looked up at the clock with a little more than a minute to go and his Lutheran team trailing Alamosa inside Denver Coliseum.
“Ok, the boys have been here.”
Indeed they had … sort of. Just one day earlier, according to Brandsma, his team had practiced an eerily similar situation: 75 seconds left, the Lions down three and in need of a bucket.
“It sounds silly because you can’t match the same intensity (as a state playoff game), but I think they were composed in that to realize that’s a lot of time,” Brandsma said. “… You try to put them in the positions, but they gotta do it and they did it.”
To be more precise, freshman big man Kade Speckman did it, converting twice in the post to send Friday afternoon’s Class 4A Great 8 showdown to overtime, where the sixth-seeded Lions wrested control from No. 3 Alamosa to win, 65-56, and advance to the Final 4. The Lions (18-8) will face No. 2 Resurrection Christian (22-4) at 4 p.m. next Thursday in Denver Coliseum.
“Our coach drew up some really good plays to get it down low,” said Speckman, who finished with eight points, eight rebounds and two blocks. “We hadn’t really been getting the ball there, but we finally started to get it there and we made some good finishes.”
If it looked like the 6-foot-8 freshman had been there before, too, it was because he’d watched his older brother, Joel, compete on the same state stage multiple times during his days at Chaparral Now it’s Kade’s turn to make a mark.
“No moment this year has ever been too big for him,” Brandsma said, “and that’s what makes him special, too, because he’s not just able to do it physically but mentally.”
Alamosa forced the entire Lutheran team to respond mentally, going up 29-20 with 3:11 left in the first half after ripping off a 20-5 run between the first and second quarters. Senior Kade Jones scored seven of his team-high 13 points during that run. Luke Christensen had 11 points and three assists for Alamosa (21-4), while Brant Jackson and Jayr Almeida added 10 apiece.
Lutheran’s long-armed defense tightened up in the second half, however, holding the Mean Moose to one basket over more than nine minutes of game time between the third and fourth quarters to go ahead 44-41 with 3:30 left in regulation. Christensen buried a corner 3-pointer to tie the game. Then Almeida stole the ball and converted an old-fashioned three-point play 17 seconds later to put them up 47-44. The lead grew to four with 58.3 seconds left, but Alamosa left the door open by going 1 for 3 at the free-throw line. Speckman twisted his way to a pair of buckets on the other end, the last tying the game at 50 with six seconds to go.
“We’ve had a lot of tight games like this,” Speckman said. “And in the end most of them we just start clutching up in the last two minutes and we finish strong.”
That was true in overtime when Lutheran’s size finally took over with 6-9 junior Hunter Caldwell (six points, nine rebounds, two blocks) sinking a pair of putbacks and Braydon Jacobs knocking down his fourth 3 of the game off a pass out of the post from Speckman.
“We stayed calm and stayed controlled and were able to handle that pressure,” said Jacobs, who scored a game-high 19 points on 6-for-16 shooting. Guard Lalo Gonzales added 12 points for Lutheran, and Tucker Monroe had 10 points.
Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.
