• Unlucky Breaks Produced Different Outcomes in Two Title Games

    I hate to think about playing the "What if" game, but I'm going to offer some scenarios that could have affected the outcome of two of the five WIAA boys state tournament title games last week.

    One of them is the Division 5 championship game between Sheboygan Lutheran and Racine Lutheran. That was a close game that went down to the wire.

    State player of the year, Sam Dekker, opened and closed the scoring for Sheboygan Lutheran. He dunked the ball to open the scoring for his team. How he closed the scoring for the day is still up in the air that will be explained in a minute.

    Believe it or not, when I looked back at the play-by-play summary, the last tie game was 39-39 in the third quarter with 4 minutes 40 seconds left when Dekker made a free-throw to complete a 3-point play. Racine Lutheran led most of the game after that point in the second half. What happened in the fourth quarter surprised everyone who were at the Kohl Center or watched it on TV.

    Racine Lutheran had a 9-point lead with 1:50 left in the game at 60-51. They were still ahead by five with 50 seconds left and looked to be on their way of winning the game. That's when Dekker came out the phone booth with a cape on and saved the day for Sheboygan Lutheran.

    What Dekker did in that 50 seconds was score his team's last 12 points, which included three three-pointers and a 3-point play. Racine Lutheran's lead was knocked down to 66-64 with 6 seconds left. What I want to know is, why did Dekker have just enough room to get off his last three to give Sheboygan Lutheran the 67-66win? Didn't Racine Lutheran's coach think at least one time to double-team Dekker so he wouldn't get a good look? Dekker got a good look at the basket because he's 6-foot-9 and can shoot over anybody. If Dekker missed that last shot, we would be talking about a different team celebrating on the floor, getting gold medals and the gold ball.

    Milwaukee King was clearly hurt by the free-throw discrepancy given by Germantown in their Division 1 championship game. The Warhawks got 37 trips to the charity stripe, making 29 while the Generals received a paltry 10 trips, making five.

    What people are still stewing about probably to this day, especially King supporters, is the lack of equality in foul distribution between both teams. When you think about it, King played hard and deserved some breaks along the way. Who knows what would have happened?

    Most of the comments on Facebook related to the game as a racial disadvantage because Germantown had two black players and King had two white players on their varsity squads. You can't blame the 72-69 Germantown win on partial refereeing. King had a last second chance to tie the game with a three-pointer. Nic Stokes had a good look at the basket, but the shot didn't go in. If the shot went in, it would have forced overtime and maybe we would be looking at a new state champion.

    I don't think there was a racial disadvantage in the way that fouls were called between one team and another team. There was an 8-3 disadvantage given to King on the fouls they committed in the last 5:30 of the game. That's probably the only thing that you can take from the game. Those fouls by the Generals gave the Warhawks the edge because they made 15 of their last 16 free-throw attempts in that time span.

    Say what you will about both games. If Racine Lutheran and King would have played their cards right, they would have had a reason to celebrate, but they didn't.