MEN’S BASKETBALL

It was a barn-burner inside Platt Arena Saturday afternoon with the 3rd-seeded HU men’s basketball team eventually slipping past 7th-seeded Taylor, 73-70, in semifinal action of the Crossroads League tournament.

The win will go down as a historic moment in the Forester record books as it’s the last game in Platt Arena as Huntington enthusiasts know it. Platt Arena is getting a complete face-lift at the conclusion of the season and will reopen in the fall with a whole new look.

The Trojans (14-16), coming off an enormous upset over 2nd-seeded IWU on Wednesday, came into the day with the same agenda as evidenced by racing out to a 10-0 lead in front of a silenced HU crowd. But there was no panic in Alford and crew as they slowly chipped away at their deficit, which took the majority of the half, before finally knotting things up with three minutes to go in the frame on indisputably the most dazzling play of the afternoon.

After an HU missed three from the corner, Lane Sparks came out of nowhere from the weak side for a monster putback dunk to force a 35-35 deadlock and send Platt Arena into a noise-deafening dither. The Trojans would enjoy one more lead after that on a pair of freebies by one of the league’s best in Jason Hubbard before Zach Goodline took over.

The crafty 6-1 guard slithered through the lane for an and one after which he drained one from the parking lot to reclaim a 41-37 lead for his team before they headed into the locker room up 41-39.

Goodline teamed up with his back court buddy Lane Sparks out of halftime to score 11 of HU’s first 15 points to give the hosts their largest lead of the day at 56-45 with just under 14 minutes to go.

But Taylor would not go away. With just six points separating the two squads at 63-57 at the 8:55 mark, Hubbard joined up with Kaden Fuhrmann, Taylor’s only other double-digit scorer of the day, to account for their team’s next 12 points to force the fourth and final tie of contest at 69-69 with 2:34 remaining.

It was anybody’s game at that point, but Sparks made sure it was his team advancing on. The 6-3 guard, who had scored HU’s six previous points, got the roll on a spin move fadeaway and then calmly sank both free tosses the next trip down the floor for a 73-69 lead with just over 90 seconds to go.

Taylor converted one of two free throws with : 36 ticks remaining and it proved the last point of the game as Goodline’s jumper with less than five seconds left fell off the rim after which Fuhrmann couldn’t get his three at the buzzer to go down.

Sparks poured in a game-best 28 points to go along with five rebounds and four steals. Goodline dropped in 20 while Joel Dyer finished with seven, all in the first half.

Hubbard led Taylor with 24 points and seven boards while Fuhrmann came off the bench to toss in 15 in addition to matching Hubbard’s rebound total of seven.

Today’s win ups HU’s record to 24-6 and punches their ticket to the championship game of the Crossroads League tournament where they will face top-seeded Grace on Tuesday. The two squads traded wins in the regular season.

Huntington is taking an 11-game win streak into the finals while Grace has strung together nine straight wins. Tip-off at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center is slated for 7:00 p.m. The last time the Foresters were in the finals of the CL tourney dates back to the 2006-07 season when they claimed both the conference regular season and tournament title under the late Steve Platt.