Anthony Gause's game-winner completes CBC's dramatic comeback victory against Cardinal Ritter
TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo. – Anthony Gause and the Christian Brothers College High School basketball team got another shot on Thursday night.
Gause and the Cadets had a chance to beat Metro Catholic Conference rival De Smet at the buzzer last Friday, but a pressured shot by the talented junior guard was off the mark and CBC had to watch the Spartans celebrate a big win.
On Thursday, Gause got another chance and redeemed himself.
Gause’s go-ahead backdoor basket with 7 seconds remaining gave the Cadets a thrilling 62-61 comeback victory over visiting Cardinal Ritter after the Lions missed a shot as time expired.
“Last game I felt bad for missing the shot,” Gause said. “This game I didn’t even know if my teammates wanted me to shoot the shot, but Terron Garrett, he told me ‘I trust you with the ball.’ That gave me confidence enough to take the last shot. It’s really a team thing. It wasn’t because of me. It was because my teammates had trust in me and I have trust in them.”
CBC (14-10) entered the fourth quarter trailing by 17 points after being outscored 19-4 in the third quarter, but Gause, senior forward Bobby Alford and freshman Semaj Stampley helped lead the Cadets back with a 32-point explosion in the fourth.
Gause and Alford both finished with a team-high 18 points, while Stampley added nine. Gause scored nine in the fourth, while Alford scored seven and Stampley added six on two 3-pointers.
The Cadets, who are ranked 16th in the SBLive Missouri Power 25 high school boys basketball rankings, hit four 3’s in the fourth quarter, which helped set the stage for Gause’s game-winning floater on a back-door cut after a perfectly-timed left-handed bounce pass from Stampley.
“Coach Tat drew up a beautiful play,” Gause said. “He had Semaj Stampley get the ball and I was gonna come up acting like I was getting the ball but I did a back cut. I just prayed to the gods that it went in and it did.”
Cardinal Ritter (19-4), which is ranked fourth in the SBLive Missouri Power 25 and entered the night with an 18-game winning streak, got a good look on a baseline runner as time expired, but the shot was just off the mark.
“This one actually feels really good to the point that we won it and that we fought for it,” CBC coach Justin Tatum said. “We won and we fought for it. The thing is we haven’t really been fighting for most of the games and so we let teams figure out how to beat us and we don’t make free throws in certain points. … I told my team, ‘Ain’t nothing else I need to coach you about. I can’t say anything else to you. You guys have to go figure it out.’ And they did that. My assistant coaches did a good job too.”
Nashawn Davis scored 18, including nine in the third quarter, to lead Cardinal Ritter. Clayton Jackson scored 14 points and James Porter added 10.
“We play our whole season to be battle-tested and this is one that we didn’t come out on the right side of it,” said Ritter coach Ryan Johnson, who is Tatum’s cousin and was his teammate on CBC’s 1997 state championship team with Larry Hughes. “That’s why we come to the gym – to get tested. It didn’t help us today.”
The visiting Lions trailed 11-9 after one quarter, but took control in the second and third quarter. Ritter led 28-24 at halftime and 47-30 going into the fourth quarter.
“We never gave up on each other,” Gause said. “We knew we were the better team. We knew our guys, we just had to step up and come together. At first, not gonna lie, towards the end of the game we got a little bit rattled and people had their heads down and stuff, but our coaching staff got us together and said we’re not out of this. We know we’re the better team so we put the pressure on them and played as hard as we could.”
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Cardinal Ritter at Christian Brothers College boys basketball
