On Friday March 1st, the South High Varsity Basketball team defeated the Edison Tommies 48-45 in overtime. The victory allowed the Tigers to enter into a three-way tie for City Conference Champions with Washburn and Southwest. This is the first time the Tigers have won the city conference since 1988.

The winner of Minneapolis and St. Paul play each other in a Twin Cities Championship. This year, since Minneapolis ended in a three-way tie, the team which has not won the city conference for the longest is allowed to play in the Twin Cities Championship. The game was played on Saturday March 2nd. St. Paul Johnson defeated Southwest 99-72.

In the game against Edison, South quickly fell behind 8-0. They played behind all of the first half. At one point they were down by as much as 12 points. With 2.6 seconds left in the half Raleigh Gleason made a long pass to Alex Richardson who was able to score as time ran out to make it 27-23 and carry the momentum into halftime.

South started the second half off flat and trailed by 35-35 with 13:33 left in the game. Slowly they made their way back, and with 2:42 left, Peyton Bowdry made a 3 point shot to tie it up for the first time since the opening seconds. Neither team was able to score with the time remaining, including South’s Tyler Peterson who hit the rim on a game winning shot as time expired.

Minnesota High School rules say a 4 minute overtime is to be played in the event of a tie. With 1:51 left, Kenley Farrow drove hard up the middle and made a layup to give South the lead 45-43, its first of the game. With 59 seconds remaining, Bowdry was fouled while taking a shot, but was still able to make it and the free throw that followed. South had a strong lead of 48-43. Edison was able to put up 2 more, but ultimately could not come back.

Richardson said, “we had a lot of turnovers, we played really sloppy, and definitely played down to our competition.” Gleason added, “We played just well enough to win.”