Columbus and St. John’s Vianney Regional win The Throne basketball championships
Los Columbus Explorers and St. John’s Vianney Regional Lancers won The Throne with a miraculous 3, a near triple-double, and Caleb Gaskins dominance.
A new boys and girls team is sitting on The Throne . St. John’s Vianney Regional Lancers (Holmdel, NJ) and the Columbus Explorers (Miami, FL) are champions of the national prep basketball tournament, winning their respective brackets by taking down the Long Island Lutheran (Brookville, NY) girls and boys teams, respectively.
The victories, though they came against the same school, took shape in two different forms. The Lancers, who won 71-68 in double overtime, needed a miraculous shot to even get out of regulation. With five seconds left, Penn commit Madison Kocis hit a ridiculous, deep, rainbow-arching 3 to tie the game at 55, coming back from what had been a four-point deficit with 20 seconds to play.
LuHi’s Emily McDonald controlled the tempo in overtime and drilled her seventh 3-pointer of the game. Neither team could gain control, and it went to double OT. There, Taylor Sofilkanich, whose clutch layup in the semifinals sent the Lancers to the championship game, put a bow on her masterpiece of a performance.
She was a key part of the comeback in the final 20 seconds of the fourth quarter, hitting a layup through contact against a double team. Now, late in the second period of overtime, she picked up her ninth block of the game and then hit a layup on the other side to give the Lancers a five-point lead with 37 seconds to play. It came down to free throws.