Jan 9, 2019 3 min read

CLAYSVILLE – Phil Pergola could have drawn up the play the McGuffey High School boys basketball team was going to run.

The longtime coach on Ringgold’s bench knew the Highlanders would look no further than C.J. Cole when trying to scribble a game-winning strategy during a timeout with seven seconds remaining and the Rams holding a one-point lead.

Dribbling right, then left, then back to his right after taking an inbound pass, Colin Walters looked off Cole rolling under a pair of screens and glanced instead at a vacated part of the floor . He found Nate Witkowsky with a bounce pass on a backdoor cut for the game-winning layup as time expired to give McGuffey a 54-53 non-section win.

“Our first primary resource is C.J.,” Witkowsky said. “He is our go-to guy for everything. We looked for him on the last play, but he wasn’t open. I saw the opportunity to go to option number two. I faked my guy and went backdoor.”

Witkowsky was uncovered when Ringgold’s man-to-man defense collapsed to stop Walters’ penetration, leading to all five Rams helplessly watching the winning shot.

“The last bucket, everybody was looking at the ball,” Pergola said. “We knew where they were trying to get it. The thing that hurt was it was originally inbounded out of the corner and we got our hands on it. Then the ball moved back near half-court (for another inbound), which opened up a bunch of different options.”

The uncontested game-winner erased an eight-point deficit McGuffey (9-4) faced when the fourth quarter began. The Highlanders trimmed Ringgold’s lead to a two-possession game four times in the final eight minutes until finally cutting it to one point, 53-52, when Witkowsky made a pair of free throws with 38 seconds remaining.McGuffey trailed the entire game after Ringgold’s Chris Peccon made a three-pointer with 53 seconds remaining in the first quarter. The Rams had an 11-point lead three times in the third quarter.

“We were down the entire game,” said McGuffey coach Mike Fatigante. “We got it down to five or six a couple times. Our guys didn’t panic. Every time we called a timeout and they came to the sideline they were confident. We just chipped away and made enough plays down the stretch to win the game.”

Peccon and Jaden Taylor made multiple shots that erased any momentum McGuffey looked like it was gaining. Peccon led Ringgold (9-3), which was in search of its first season with double-digit wins since 2011, with 17 points. Taylor finished with 15.

The Highlanders were challenged by the deficit and the length of all five starters of Ringgold, who out-sized them at every position. The Rams’ biggest player, 6-5 Ben Lawrence, was just shy of finishing with 10 blocked shots.

“Across the board, we were giving up a couple of inches everywhere,” Fatigante said. “Our kept telling our guys to continue to attack the rim and to not be afraid of attacking it.”

Witkowsky was one of those players who continued to attack the basket, scoring seven of his 12 points in the fourth quarter. Dylan Summers scored eight points and Cole, who kept McGuffey competitive, scored a game-high 27.

“It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t pretty,” Fatigante laughed. “But in the end it worked.”