By Chris Stevens, Editor
Trailing 7th-seeded St. Elizabeth by one point with 52 seconds to go Saturday night, Tatnall head coach Anthony Wright was sure everyone in the building would be looking for guard Omari Banks to take the key shot. So he called on Banks’ backcourt partner to come through in the clutch.
Senior guard Za’an Burrell nailed a three-pointer from the right baseline with 45 seconds left and came up with a hustling, diving steal in the final seconds as the 10th-seeded Hornets held off the Vikings 45-40 in the third round of the DIAA boys’ basketball tournament.
“Za’an hit a big shot like that for us to force overtime in the DMA game,” Wright explained. “Once he gets a chance to set his feet and shoot, it’s a good shot for us.”
“I trusted the process, my coaches and my teammates,” added Burrell, who will be attending Princeton University next fall. “I was wide open and I knew it was my shot.”
Burrell’s clutch bucket was the final act in a game that was hotly contested throughout. Banks’ 25-footer at the first quarter horn gave Tatnall (11-4) a 12-10 lead, but St. E countered with three point shots from Jermai Herring and Blake Bryant for a 19-17 halftime lead.
The game almost got away from Tatnall as St. E senior forward Jaden Dickerson (14 points) authored a 9-2 run to push the Vikings (7-5) to a 28-19 lead two minutes into the third quarter. Banks engineered a rally of his own to tie the game at 30 heading to the fourth. The final quarter went back and forth until Tatnall inbounded under St. E’s basket with 52 seconds left. Caleb Sales fired a perfect pass to an open Burrell, who let the ball fly and it found the bottom of the net.
“That’s my right hand,” Banks, the game’s leading scorer with 27 points, said of Burrell. “I knew someone was going to step up for us and I’m glad it was him.”
After two Banks free throws pushed the Hornet lead to four points, Burrell jumped in front of Dickerson on the inbounds pass, doggedly chased the loose ball down and flipped it to Sales with 4 seconds left to end it.
“Those 50/50 balls are the ones that win the games,” he explained. “It’s all about hustle. Players who make those plays, they want to win it. That’s how it was – I wasn’t letting us lose.”
Tatnall now moves on to the quarterfinals where they will visit second-seed Salesianum Tuesday night at 6:30 pm.
