SHELBY —Luke Henrich may not have been the first option, but the St. Peter’s junior never hesitated when the ball found its way into his hands.
A 6-foot-2 guard, Henrich connected on a baseline jumper with 1:12 remaining and the Spartans remained undefeated with a 50-44 win at Shelby on Saturday.
“Usually Jared (Jakubick) or Elijah (Cobb) are the ones who take the final shots, but Shelby was playing such good defense on them,” said Henrich, who finished with seven points. “They left me open, so I thought I would shoot it and it worked out.”
Henrich’s late heroics wouldn’t have been necessary had the Whippets (8-4) not staged a stunning fourth-quarter comeback. The Spartans (15-0) led 42-34 after three quarters but were outscored 10-2 during the first 5:30 of the fourth. A Brady Hill 3-pointer followed by a Hill steal and layup pulled Shelby even at 44-44 with 2:30 remaining.
Cobb broke the tie with a driving layup less than 10 seconds later and St. Peter’s never trailed again.
“We’ve played in pressure situations a lot, so we kind of know how to handle it,” said Cobb, who scored half of St. Peter’s eight fourth-quarter points. “We can’t lose our focus. That is where most teams mess up. They lose their focus and become undisciplined.”
St. Peter’s coach Joe Jakubick considered calling a timeout after the Whippets tied the score, but decided against it.
“I saw Elijah had open court. I’m going to let him do his thing,” Jakubick said. “With Elijah and Jared on the court, I feel like we can work through anything.
“We made some careless turnovers and they came back and tied it up, but our kids kept their composure.”
St. Peter’s led 28-27 at the half, but outscored the Whippets 14-7 in the third quarter. The Spartans closed the period on a 12-4 run to break a 30-30 tie.
“We were down one at halftime, which I thought was pretty good,” Shelby coach Troy Schwemley said. “I thought we defended fairly well and we battled back.
“We knew Jakubick was going to be a matchup problem and I thought Cobb hurt us a little bit, too.”
Jakubick scored a game-high 17. Cobb added 16.
Hill led the Whippets with 13 points. Uriah Schwemley added 10, while Hunter Hoffman and Carter Brooks each added six.
After winning four straight, the Whippets lost back-to-back home games over the weekend. Shelby fell to Sandusky 59-56 on Friday.
“Tonight was a bad night,” Schwemley said. “When you look at (Friday) night, I thought we played pretty good team basketball. Tonight we started to stray a little bit from moving the ball when we needed to.
“Their help defense was really good and it didn’t seem like we made extra passes when we needed to. Sometimes it seemed like we had one guy working really hard and everybody else was watching.”
