Riley Wildcats walk the postseason tightrope to the Final Four

by Greg Carroll (carroll@wsbt.com)

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By Beth Boehne

Story Created: Mar 12, 2008 at 5:22 PM EST

Story Updated: Mar 12, 2008 at 5:22 PM EST

They're all the basketball buzz. The Riley Wildcats are off to Saturday’s 4A Final Four to face Marion, but not before surviving an incredible 3-game stretch that wasn't for the faint of heart. You can certainly call them the 'Close Call ‘Cats!’

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First it was a game-winning hoop against Washington to win the sectional by a point. A nip-tuck affair followed with Warsaw in the regional semi-final that they won by 3 points.

The cherry on top? A last second shot by Cody Henson to bounce the defending state champs from East Chicago Central.

South Bend Riley has been walking the postseason tightrope, but coming up winners nonetheless.

“A good friend of mine came to the Washington game, he told my wife, he said, ‘You’ve got a 7-point lead — this is simple!’ Well by the time he put his popcorn down we were down by one [point],” said Riley coach Mark Johnson. “And so we seem to do much, much better when we’re behind, we get to scramble a little bit, but believe me we’d much rather be ahead than behind.”

At one point in the fourth quarter, Riley trailed East Chicago by 12. So what happened next? Fourteen straight Wildcat points. When the chips are down, Riley's not ready to cash ‘em in.

“If we play like we’ve been playing the last four or five games, we can do anything,” said senior guard J.T. Breveard. “It’s just about heart, and just staying together as a team.”

And it seems that quality shows up no more than with Cody Henson. He’s kept resilient Riley's season alive, not once, but twice during this great run.

“Our motto the whole year has been we have to 'Win or go home,' and we weren’t ready to go home,” Henson said. “We just had to keep driving and driving until that final buzzer went off.”

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