MINNEAPOLIS -- Jake Driscoll didn't have time to think about it.
Which was probably a good thing because his chest began heaving some five minutes after hitting a 12-foot floater with 1.6 seconds left in regulation to give Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton a 52-51 victory against Plainview in the Minnesota Class 2A boys basketball state quarterfinals at Williams Arena Wendesday.
"A little excited," Driscoll said.
Even the ability to form complete sentences escaped the freshman point guard.
The plan -- set during a timeout with 16 seconds remaining -- was to give the biggest shot in school history to 6-foot-10 center Adam Holte.
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Instead, "the play kind of broke down," said senior guard Tom Costello, who was forced to dish to Driscoll on the left side. The 5-foot-7, 130-pounder drove, made a fake and flipped a shot that touched nothing but net to give him 20 points for the night.
And just for good measure, he knocked away Plainview's inbound pass as time expired, sending tournament first-timer D-G-F (21-8) into a semifinal matchup with No. 2-ranked Braham (29-2) at 9 p.m. Friday at Target Center.
"He knows he's a player," Rebels coach Bob Torgrimson said of Driscoll, the team's leading scorer during the regular season. "Players make plays."
Driscoll made several, scoring his team's final seven points, after D-G-F lost its offensive flow.
The Rebels, who squandered a 10-point lead in the first half, led 45-37 with 7 minutes, 3 seconds to play following a Holte layup. Twice in the next two minutes they had a chance to bury the Gophers (23-6), calling a timeout to set up a play in each situation, only to come up empty.
In fact, other than the game-winner -- and that's a big exception -- the final 100 seconds were disastrous for D-G-F.
There was an air-ball layup try, a missed three throw, a dropped pass under its basket and a turnover under the Plainview basket. Eric Larson converted the last mistake into a layup and a 51-50 lead with 46 seconds to play.
However, the Gophers, in their first tournament since the very first tournament (1913), couldn't close out the Rebels either.
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Mike Kasten, playing through a bruise that looked like a large tattoo on the lower half of his right leg and left him at 50 percent, according to coach Kirk Thompson, missed the front end of a one-and-one with 28 seconds remaining.
Costello grabbed the rebound, setting the stage for Driscoll's heart-stopping heroics.
"They're patient," Thompson said. "They wait for some good shots and they know what they want to do."
What the Rebels wanted to do was put Plainview away the first time, way back in the first half.
They snagged a 24-14 lead by starting the second quarter on an 11-2 run, which included three 3-pointers. The cushion that took more than four minutes to build was gone in 61 seconds. That's how long Driscoll and Holte rested, which was time enough for the Gophers to score seven consecutive points en route to pulling even at 24-24 by halftime.
"When the big guy comes out it's kind of scary," said Costello, the team's only senior, who scored 16 points. "But we battled. We stuck with our game plan."
They stuck with their fearless freshman.
"I don't think about anything like that," Driscoll said when asked about handling the pressure of a final shot at such a young age (16). "Just think about the game."
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Plainview 12 24 37 51
D-G-F 13 24 40 52
PLAINVIEW: Gessner 3 1-2 7, Larson 2 1-2 5, Kasten 2 1-3 5, Kolb 3 3-4 11, Ihrke 4 0-0 8, McHone 5 1-1 11, Nielsen 1 0-0 2, Miller 1 0-0 2. Totals 21 7-12 51.
D-G-F: Johnk 2 0-1 4, Driscoll 8 0-1 20, Costello 6 1-1 16, Green 2 0-0 4, Holte 3 2-2 8. Totals 21 3-5 52.
3-point goals: Kolb 2, Driscoll 4, Costello 3. Total fouls: P 11, D-G-F 13. Rebounds: P 28 (Ihrke 8), D-G-F 29 (Holte 8). Assists: P 10 (Gessner 4), D-G-F 7 (Costello, Holte 2). Steals: P 5 (Larson 3), D-G-F 2 (Costello, Green). Turnovers: P 8, D-G-F 14.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Terry Vandrovec at (701) 241-5548
