Yakutat seemingly had everything going for them — the crowd, big-time shotmakers and a never-say-die attitude.
But they didn’t have Alex Heumann, the Juneau Crush player who scored 57 points to lift his team to a 114-102 triple overtime win Tuesday afternoon in the Gold Medal C Bracket.
Heumann waited a long time to play in the Gold Medal Basketball Tournament, and he wasn’t ready to be done with the tournament after just two games.
“I’ve been waiting to play in Gold Medal my entire life and it’s more than lived up to everything I thought it could be,” Heumann said. “Playing against Yakutat, guys who I have much respect for, crowd filled with some of the people who have mentored me more than anybody else, I’m just very thankful to ball.”
Yakutat’s Martin Sensmeier also had a monster game, coming up with 56 points. Jimmy Jensen added 29 points in the losing effort.
Juneau led 53-52 at the end of the third quarter and looked poised to close the game out. It was a recurring pattern — Juneau going up three or four points on high-energy plays only to watch Yakutat promptly shoot their way back in the game.
Such as in the fourth quarter, when, after going down five points, Sensmeier was fouled on a 3-point shot to tie the game at 67.
And then later in the quarter, when Jensen shot over Sean Joslyn with 40 seconds left to tie the game at 77, the score at the end of regulation.
But the real jaw-dropping, how-on-earth-did-they-do-that Yakutat plays came in the first and second overtime periods.
In the first overtime, after going down by three with 20 seconds to go, Sensmeier saved what looked to be a sure turnover at midcourt. The high scorer jumped in front of Dean for a loose ball before finding Jay Johnson on the left wing for a 3-pointer that tied the game at 89.
“Those guys have been playing their whole life just like we have,” Heumann said. “To see them hit big shots, it just kept on raising the level of the game.”
The madness (or exhilaration, depending which side you were on) continued in the second overtime, when Heumann put Juneau up 99-96 with under a minute to go. Then, after missing a 3, Sensmeier stole the ball away from Dean. He then dribbled around a Johnson screen to knock down his second attempt from long range and tie the game at 99.
The magic finally ran out for Yakutat in the third overtime, when Heumann’s offense and defense finally got the best of them. Yakutat was outscored 15-3 in the third overtime.
“My teammates kept making big play after big play when we finally got a little bit of a lead,” Heumann said. “I still wasn’t believing it was real because they hit so many big shots. Until that final buzzer sounded, there was no sure things out there.”
Juneau plays Filcom in another elimination game today at 2 p.m. Filcom lost to Klukwan in Monday action.
• Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com
Juneau Crush’s Alex Heuman, left, and Joshua Dean, right, rebound over Yakutat’s JP Buller during their C bracket game in the Juneau’s Lion’s Gold Medal Basketball Tournament at Juneau-Douglas High School on Tuesday, March 20, 2018. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire)
Yakutat’s Martin Sensmeier, left, passes around Juneau Crush’s Joshua Dean during their C bracket game in the Juneau’s Lion’s Gold Medal Basketball Tournament at Juneau-Douglas High School on Tuesday, March 20, 2018. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire)
