Coburn’s Late Bucket Gives Lions Win Against Francis Howell Central

With the game tied and time winding down, Logan Coburn did his best to avoid overtime. 

His best was good enough.

Coburn’s basket with two ticks left on the clock gave the Lions a 70-68 non-conference victory over the Francis Howell Central Spartans Tuesday at Zumwalt East. 

Colin Zurweller tossed the ball to Coburn who nailed a layup and made the score 70-68.

“We had a play designed that broke down a little bit,” East coach Terry Johnson said on his team’s last play. “But Logan got the ball and made a big play.” 

East improves to 4-3 with the win. Howell Central drops to 1-4. 

Coburn said he was glad to “step up for the team.” 

“I just caught the ball and I knew I had to make a play,” Coburn said. “I did my best and put it in the hoop.” 

Johnson credited his team’s performance on the boards. Offensive rebounds gave his team many second chances throughout the contest. 

“It’s (rebounding) something we work on quite a bit,” he said. “It’s been a point of emphasis. We’ve been trying to get our kids to rebound well. The good thing about tonight is all five of our guys rebounded. Sometimes you depend on two or three and everybody else runs off, but we’ve been trying to avoid that.” 

Coburn was one of a trio of players in double digits for the Lions—Coburn, Zurweller, and Josh Ross each finished with 15 points. Ross scored all 15 in the second half. Howell Central coach Larry Anders felt his team lacked consistency. 

“It’s early in the season and if you don’t execute like you should then you’re not going to win games,” he said. “We were playing catch up the entire night. It seemed like whenever they needed a big basket they got it. When we needed one to get close we got it, but defense was huge tonight. You let a team score close to 70 points and you’re not going to win games.”   

The Lions led 54-44 at the end of the third quarter. Ryan Howard’s basket at the 6:44 mark in the fourth quarter ignited an 11-6 run which was capped off by Ryan Miller’s trey at the 3:27 mark. The run made the score 63-59 Lions. East continued to control the lead until Howard’s three with 27 seconds left in the game tied the score up at 68 points. 

The Lions established control early in the game, as Mason Burnett’s basket at the 5:09 mark in the first quarter gave East a 10-2 lead. But the Spartans chipped away at East’s lead. Derrick Puni’s basket at the 4:35 mark kicked off an 8-2 run and East held a slim 12-10 lead at the 2:10 mark in the first quarter. Miller and Howard both had threes in the run at the 3:30 and 2:10 marks.  The Lions held a 15-14 lead at the end of the first quarter.

The contest was tied up at 22 and 24 points in the second quarter and East led 31-28 at halftime. 

Puni led Howell Central’s offense with 28 points, Howard had 22 points, and Miller threw in 12.