1A boys basketball: Earlville falls 51-50 to Aurora Christian in OT in title game

AURORA – The Earlville boys basketball team looked to be in a good position several times during Friday’s Class 1A Aurora Christian Regional championship game against the Aurora Christian Eagles to bring home the program’s first regional championship and first postseason hardware since a district title in 1958.

The Red Raiders had an 11-point lead at halftime and still held a six-point advantage with two minutes to go.

But Aurora Christian was able to claw back and tie the game at the end of regulation, then it used consecutive 3-pointers by Jalen Carter in overtime to eventually post a 51-50 victory.

“The guys really came out ready to play right from the start,” Earlville coach Gerald Fruit said. “There were several things that didn’t go our way there in the fourth quarter and we lost our composure a little bit down the stretch. That’s normally the time we put teams away, but we just weren’t able to do that tonight. I really thought mid-third quarter we were in a great position to win this game, but Aurora Christian was able to find ways to get back in the game.”

Junior center Adam Waite led Earlville with a game-best 23 points, including a two-handed dunk right before halftime, 13 rebounds and a pair of blocked shots. Senior Griffin Cook, who fouled out with 30 seconds left in regulation, finished with 11 points, five rebounds, four assists and two blocks, while classmate Trenton Fruit scored eight points. Senior Ryan Browder netted four points, with six rebounds and five assists.

Earlville (28-5) broke the 86-year-old record of 25 wins for the 1937-38 team and posted the first 20-win season since 1955-56. Along with that were the champions of the Route 17 Classic at Thanksgiving, third at Marquette Christmas Tournament, runner-up in both the LTC regular season and tournament.

“When I took over this program one of my main goals was to obviously win games, but I also wanted to build towards being in positions like we were in tonight,” coach Fruit said. “I want Earlville boys basketball teams to be in the hunt for Little Ten Conference and regional championships every season.

“That said, those titles are hard to get as we saw here tonight. The guys played their hearts out, but we just came up a little bit short.”

Earlville led by two (45-43) with 42 seconds left in regulation after a Trenton Fruit free throw, but the Eagles tied the game on free tosses from Marshawn Cocroft with 30 seconds left and then tied in on Asa Johnson’s charity toss with 14.4 seconds remaining. The Red Raiders last chance saw a turnover as the buzzer sounded.

In extra time, Carter - who finished with 17 points - swished a triple 20 seconds in, then after a layup by Waite, hit another from the same spot with 2:15 on the clock to make it 51-47.

Waite converted a three-point play at the 1:51 mark, but that’s as close as Earlville would get a the final of their 22 turnovers happened with two seconds left in overtime.

“Earlville played a great game and did a lot of good things, no doubt about that,” Aurora Christian coach Dan Beebe said, his club improving to 22-8 . “We struggled to make shots for much of the game (16 of 52, 31%), even when we were right under the basket, but Asa hit that free throw to tie it up in regulation and we were able to get a stop on Earlville’s last possession.

“Then Jalen hit a couple of really big 3s there in overtime to get us over the top. What a great game between two very good basketball teams.”