Boys basketball: Teegan Davis’ gift dunk, Princeton’s defense sparks win over Byron

PRINCETON – The Princeton Tigers needed a spark Tuesday night at Prouty Gym in a game visiting Byron led for most of the first 21 minutes.

They found it in a most strange way.

Teegan Davis took an errant Byron inbounds pass and said thank you very much for a breakaway, uncontested slam dunk. That capped a 6-0 run to put Class 2A No. 1-ranked Princeton back in the lead for good on the way to a 49-38 win in the regular-season finale.

“I didn’t try for a wide-open dunk tonight, but I’ll take anything I can get. Kind of an exciting dunk, and everybody gets high for it. Kind of pushed us,” Davis said.

“That was an energy booster for sure. We needed that,” said Princeton senior Grady Thompson, who had a game-high 22 points.

The Princeton defense took it from there, holding the Tigers to four points in the fourth quarter, 10 in the second half, to put their stamp on their 29th victory heading into postseason play. Princeton (29-2) will take the No. 1 Orion sub-sectional B seed into the Bureau Valley Regional on Wednesday, awaiting the winner of Saturday’s Bureau Valley at Hall play-in game.

Byron (19-9), which is the No. 3 seed in the Orion sub-sectional B, held leads of 13-12 at the end of the first quarter and 27-25 at the half and led 34-32 for the first 5 1/2 minutes of the third quarter.

Thompson scored on a run-out on a pass from Davis at the 2:34 mark of the third quarter and Noah LaPorte scored in the post to put the Tigers up 36-34.

Shortly after, Byron players miscommunicated on an inbounds pass into the backcourt and Davis took the freebie and slammed it home with not a Byron Tiger in sight. He didn’t kick the gift horse in the mouth, he just dunked it.

“I felt like he passed it to me. I don’t know. Sometimes it just falls in your hands and you get lucky and everything,” said Davis, who scored nine points.

“I’m not exactly for sure what happened. It was almost like the guy threw it, and we thought Teegan was dunking at the wrong basket for a minute because there was like nobody there. Even the officials paused and waited,” Princeton coach Jason Smith said. “I thought it was huge because it was a two-point game at the time. Got us to a four-point lead, and I thought if we could get one more stop and score at the other end and get it to six, the way we were playing defense was a pretty good indication how the night was going to end.”

Princeton outscored Byron 9-4 in the fourth quarter, 8-2 in the final 3 1/2 minutes to win comfortably in the end.

Davis and Thompson said it was just the kind of game Princeton needed heading into the postseason.

“Pretty close game all throughout. Regionals and stuff can be pretty close. It’s playoff basketball, so it was good for us,” Davis said.

“It’s a good confidence game and kind of gets us that playoff feel and gets us more ready for intense teams like that,” Thompson said.

Smith said the game ”really had a postseason feel to it and was a possession by possession game.”

“I thought we came out pretty sloppy in the first half. Didn’t take care of the ball like we wanted to,” he said. “But I felt like our defense kept us in it and really took it over in the second half, only giving up 10 points. I’m really proud of our kids’ effort, how they stayed with it and didn’t get frustrated and just battled a tough, gritty victory.”

Noting their 12-of-24 free-throw shooting, the Tigers’ coach said, “We’ll be shooting a lot of free throws before regionals next week.”

Ryan Tucker topped Byron with 11 points

Tiger tales: With their 29th win, Princeton tops the 28-4 mark of the 1953-54 state tournament Tigers squad. Only the 1954-55 Tigers, who placed fourth at state, have won more games in school history, going 32-3. ... Princeton won the sophomore game, 53-37, finishing the season at 26-4. Jordan Reinhardt led the Kittens with 26 points and Liam Swearingen added 13.