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BOYS BASKETBALL: Spartans stun Edison with McKinnon’s buzzer beater
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STOCKTON — In opening-round action of the Winners Classic Basketball Tournament on Thursday, Lathrop took its first lead over tournament-host Edison with 40 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

That lead lasted 20 seconds, and the Spartans would not lead again until after the final buzzer as Anthony McKinnon drained a high-arching buzzer-beating 3-pointer for a thrilling 66-65 win over the Vikings.

With Edison (1-1) leading 64-63 with 5.9 seconds left, Leon Mills Jr. added one more from the free-throw line, giving Lathrop (3-1) the ball for an inbounds pass trailing 65-63. The Spartans promptly got the ball into the near court and called timeout with 3.2 seconds on the clock.

Following the timeout, Kameron Jones inbounded the ball to Napolean Reeves on the wing, who briefly looked at the bucket and then fired the ball to McKinnon in the corner and McKinnon let it fly. The buzzer sounded after it left his hand, but before it gathered nothing but net to give Lathrop its second lead of the night — when it counted.   

“At the time, I told myself I had to get it up,” McKinnon said. “It was now or never.

“I just threw it up. It went in. Bucket.”

After trailing by as many as 11 points in the third quarter, Reeves helped bring the Spartans back into the game with 10 of his team-high 19 points in the fourth period.

“In the moment, I thought I would shoot on that inbounds pass,” Reeves said. “But when I turned my head to the left and I saw my guy (McKinnon) open I had to hit him, because he was wide open.

“A lot of us played Edison earlier in our high school careers, and we needed this win for our last laugh.”

Tensions ran high throughout the game with eight technical fouls. Six of those technical were simultaneous, so no free throws were awarded on those. The other two were called on Lathrop, which committed two personal fouls in the first 12 seconds of the game and three in the first minute.

“Within a little over two minutes into the game there were 11 fouls,” Spartans coach Robin Hong said. “We had two of our core starters foul out in the third quarter. It was a long game, but we battled. We knew coming into it that it was going to be a war.

“But together we made it happen. A lot of people came in and a lot of subs were made but the level of play was still high. We set that standard for them every day in practice. It was a great win for us to tuck under our belts moving forward.”

Elijah McCullough scored six of his 10 points in the fourth quarter for Lathrop, and Anthony McKinnon had five of his seven points in the final period.

The Spartans face Grant of Sacramento tonight at 8:30 in a semifinal contest.