Niceville outlasts Crestview in 2OT

CRESTVIEW – It was high school basketball at it’s finest as Crestview hosted Okaloosa County rival Niceville in a key District 2-6A boys game Friday night.

Two evenly matched teams battled four quarters and then some before the final outcome was decided.

Niceville post player Nicholas Haynes scored on a 3-point play with 16 seconds left in the second overtime to give the Eagles a 55-54 win.

“The bottom line is both teams were making plays and really came down to who had the ball last,” Niceville coach Jerome Strutchen said. “This is huge because we still have two district games left and this puts us at 5-1.

“We don’t know what’s going on at Niceville and Fort Walton Beach so we just have to keep doing our part.”

A pair of Ronnie Baylark free throws with 1:31 left in the second overtime put Crestview up 54-50. And the Bulldogs continued to lead by four as the clock slipped under a minute in the period.

Kyle Koszuta hit both ends of a one-and-one with 55 seconds left in the second extra stanza to pull the Eagles (12-7, 5-1) to within a basket.

The Bulldogs (12-7, 3-4) had a chance to push the lead back to four points with 27 seconds left, but Baylark missed the front end of a one-and-one. Baylark’s missed free throw spoiled an otherwise perfect night at the line for Crestview and couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Niceville rushed the ball up court and got it in the hands of Haynes, who drew a foul as he went for the score from inside the lane to tie the game before hitting the game-winning free throw.

Even then, the Bulldogs still had 16 seconds to score, but a couple of shots from close range clanged off the iron.

Crestview had one last chance with 1.5 seconds showing on the clock. Baylark got the ball on an inbounds play, but was unable to pull the trigger on the shot before time expired.

At the outset it looked as if the game would never get to a first overtime, much less a second one.

The Eagles came out bombing early in the game with Chris Forbes and Koszuta doing most of the damage early.

Koszuta opened the game with a 3-pointer on his way to five first quarter points, but it was Forbes who stole the show.

Forbes, who finished with a game-high 19 points on six 3-pointers, hit two 3s in the first quarter in a sign of things to come.

Down 11-2 less than four minutes into the game, the Bulldogs battled back behind the play of Baylark, Justin Cline and Antryun Coleman.

Cline kept Crestview in the game in the first quarter scoring four points. Coleman and Baylark took over in the second quarter with Bay-lark scoring seven and Coleman six as Crestview turned a 15-9 deficit after one into a 24-22 lead at the half.

Denzel Ware and Jonathan Buckelew played strong for the Bulldogs in the third quarter and Haynes carried the Eagles.

Crestview lead 36-30 after three, but Forbes and Koszuta came on strong in the fourth quarter to send the game to overtime.

The game was tied 43-43 at the end of regulation and 47-47 after the first overtime setting the stage for the dramatic finish.

“We had a lot of in house trouble the last couple of days and this game might have fixed that,” Crestview coach Keith White said. “We are going to keep those things in house, but it affected some decisions I had to make tonight. But to watch the kids and the way they responded is promising.

“We did have a four-point lead late, but if you look back, we were down 11-2 also and we came back and took the lead and fought hard.”