High School Boys Basketball: Leo falls short in first-ever State Finals

The Leo boys basketball team fell short of a state title in their first-ever trip to Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Saturday, losing to Silver Creek in the Class 3A title game, 50-49

Been an unreal experience for me.")???in the evening session at bankers life..

Leo making its first ever appearance on this stage... the lions taking on defending state champion silver creek in the 3-a title tilt..

Dragons are led by purude signee trey kauffman- renn....???and early on, kauffman-renn showing why he's considered one of the best players in the state... blows right by his defender and dunks it with two hands..

He finished with 13 points and 10 boards..???but leo not backing down... second quarter... xavier middleton spots up for a corner three and knocks it down... that gives the lions a five point lead late in the first half..???but the dragons finish the half with a flurry... cooper jacobi comes up with the steal... takes it the other way for two of his team-high 18 points... a 6-0 run gives silver creek a one point lead heading into halftime..???and they started to pull away in the second half... fourth quarter, it's an eight point game when brandon northern drops home this floater... all of a sudden, silver creek's lead is at double digits with less than five minutes to play..

???but if we learned one thing about leo during this tournament run, it's that this team has absolutely no quit... davison... trying to put his squad on his back... and-one cuts the deficit to four..

???under a minute to play now, leo down six... d-j allen... not known as a three point shooter, but he makes the biggest one of the night right here... makes it a three point game...???ensuing possession for the lions... davison... spinning... floating... and scoring two of his team-high 18 points... and leo has crawled back within one with 41 seconds left to play... ???silver creek extends the lead back to three with a couple of free throws... but they miss this one, so the lions get a chance to tie with less than 10 seconds to play... davison finds a wide open allen underneath the bucket... layup good, but leo's got no timeouts left... and the clock is going to run out on the lions' comeback..

Time expires, and silver creek holds on to win the state title, 50-49 your final..

A heartbreaking finish to a heck of a run for leo...)blake davison: "the last play or whatever, i knew we were down three.

I probably should have shot that ball.

Trey was coming up on me.

I just saw a wide open dj down there.

I guess i didn't realize that we didn't have five seconds to get the ball in, and just ended up that way."cary cogdell: "we might have lost this game, but there's no reason to hang your head.

They just battled and battled, and they've done it together, and they've done it all year, and we just came up a little bit short."dj allen: "we don't have high-majors.

We don't have people that are going really far.

It's just the team bond, the way we can come together and play hard, just get after it every night in practice... and just play our hearts out.

I just love it, you know?

We made it this far."

)the lions finish their season with a 24-5 record...they'll go down as the first time in