Garfield beats Auburn to win Hardwood Invite. Police respond after awards ceremony
The intensity felt like it was March rather than an early-season non-league contest before Christmas, both during the championship game of the inaugural Hardwood Invite boys basketball tournament at Auburn High – and after.
On the court, the host Trojans and Garfield Bulldogs put on a show of determination and physicality that ended in a 62-55 victory for the Bulldogs.
Off it, things turned briefly ugly long after the final whistle and even after the tournament awards ceremony had been completed. Some 20 minutes after all was done, hundreds of the sold-out 2,500 spectators remained in the gym.
That’s when some sort of altercation happened. A moment later, students and parents were screaming and running down a hall away from the gymnasium.
“We can confirm that a fight broke out on school property after tonight’s basketball game at Auburn High School,” the Auburn Police Department posted on Twitter about 11:30 p.m. “We have no confirmation of a shooting and are working now to clear the school. At this time, there are no injuries to report.”
Auburn police arrived quickly with weapons drawn, asked where the suspects were, and raced into the gym as spectators were ushered by coaches and officials into classrooms.
The scene was cleared quickly, and as more police started to arrive to clear the building, most everyone was either already gone or leaving the premises.
“I’m not even going to talk about this part after,” Auburn coach Ryan Hansen said. “I don’t want to take away from the tournament.”
Yes, the tournament.
Four days of basketball played by 16 teams from three states came down to a championship game between two of the top Class 3A state title contenders come next March. Both Auburn and Garfield came into this one with 8-0 records, and both had played mostly dominant basketball over the course of the first three days of this tournament.
The championship game was highlighted by ferocious defensive intensity over the first two quarters, with Auburn finally taking a two-point lead, 20-18, at the half on two Semal Brown free throws with two seconds left in the second quarter.
Things opened up offensively after the break, though.
Tied at 28-28 with 5:15 left, Auburn finished the quarter on a 16-9 run that staked the Trojans to a 44-37 lead entering the fourth quarter. However, as the quarter ended, Tyrell Nichols attempted a three-quarter court heave on which he was fouled by Koren Johnson.
Awarded three free throws, Auburn ended up at the line for five shots after Jazel Brown was subsequently called for a technical foul. But Nichols missed two of his three attempts, then Dae’Kwon Watson made just one of the two technical shots.
The sequence seemed to fuel the Bulldogs as the fourth quarter began, and Garfield ran off the first 14 points of the final quarter to take a 51-44 lead with 3:58 to play. Prior to grabbing the lead midway through the run on a Sherrell McCullum basket with 5:43 left, the Bulldogs had led for a total of nine seconds in the game.
But after the run, Garfield never trailed again in winning the title.
“It was a great atmosphere,” Hansen said. “It’s the game people wanted to see, the game people came out for. It was hard-fought, a physical game. They made enough plays in the fourth quarter to win.”
Prior to that, Watson and then senior Caden Hansen put Auburn in position to have a chance to win. Watson scored eight of his 14 points in the first half to bolster a Trojans offense when others couldn’t hit.
“It was very intense,” Watson said. “That’s probably the first time I’ve been in a crowd like that. We were just talking about it in the locker room. That’s probably the biggest crowd we’ve ever seen. We tried to come out and just play like we play and do what we do.”
Caden Hansen scored 13 of his team-high 20 during that big third-quarter. But in the end, Johnson made eight straight free throws over the final 3:19 for Garfield, finishing with a game-high 27 points, as the Bulldogs won the title before things broke loose afterwards.
This story was originally published December 22, 2021 at 1:07 AM.