The Defense Never Rests

It was one shot that forever swayed the momentum in the state title game.

It was a preseason mindset carried out in the second half that brought home another championship.

Maverick Ridenour provided both.

The senior’s 3-pointer to end the third quarter Saturday at State Fair Arena was a key cog in a dominant final stretch as Kingfisher once again thwarted rival Heritage Hall in the Class 4A boys basketball state title game.

The Jackets allowed just two points in the final 7:20 to earn a 48-40 come-from-behind win over the second-ranked Chargers to prove what most have thought all season:

Kingfisher is the best team in Class 4A.

The win gives the program its third state championship since 2017 and caps an epic finals trilogy with the Chargers.

Heritage Hall denied Kingfisher’s repeat bid by winning the teams’ first finals matchup in 2018.

KHS returned the favor with a dominant performance in 2019.

COVID-19 canceled what could have been a semifinals matchup in 2020, but the Jackets finally got to flex their dominance in this year’s finale.

“It seems like anytime our kids are playing Heritage Hall in anything, it’s like a grudge match. They’re playing for themselves and the players in the past,” head coach Jared Reese said.

“They had the weight of the program and the weight of a town on their back and they really came through.”

Ridenour was a shining example.

The Jackets trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half and were down 36-28 with under 1:00 to play in the third quarter before storming back.

Matthew Stone made it a five-point game with a 3-pointer with 52 seconds to go in the third and the KHS defense delivered a stop on the other end.

With time winding down in the frame, Bijan Cortes drove the right side of the lane, drew in three defenders and kicked it out to his teammate.

Ridenour caught, shot and held the pose as the trey found nothing but the bottom of the net.

“That was a huge play for us in my opinion,” fellow senior Jarret Birdwell said.

Kingfisher still trailed 36-34, but the entire team was electrified when heading to the sideline.

“I felt the momentum turn to our side,” Ian Daugherty said.

“That moment, I knew we were going to win,” Stone added. “I knew we were going to win every possession in the fourth by doing the little things and we did that.”

He was right.

Trey Alexander, who torched the Jackets for 16 first-half points, knocked down a 17-foot jumper 40 seconds into the fourth quarter to give his team a four-point advantage.

The shot gave him his first points of the second half.

They were also his last.

The Jackets answered 20 seconds later as Cortes drained a 3-pointer from the top of the key.

The University of Oklahoma signee then put the Jackets on top 39-38 with a right-hand runner in the lane with 5:55 to play.

It was the first time KHS led since late in the first quarter.

It was a lead the Jackets wouldn’t surrender.

That was due in large part to Ridenour’s defense on Alexander, the Auburn signee who most recruiting services have as the top Oklahoma player in the class of 2021.

“You could see it in his eyes that he wanted to shoot and score, especially in the fourth quarter after we took the lead,” Reese said.

So, if Alexander had the ball in his hands, Reese sent an extra defender at him to force him to get rid of it early.

“Maverick did such a good job of not letting him get it back or if he did, he had to work really hard to do it,” Reese said. “Then we’d double him again.”

It was what Kingfisher did for the most part in the first half.

It just didn’t work.

Alexander managed to make multiple shots with hands in his face. When he wasn’t shooting, his teammates answered the call.

That helped Heritage Hall turn a 10-3 first-quarter deficit into a 27-16 lead when Alexander buried a long 3-pointer with 2:35 left in the first half.

It was his third trey of the half. As a team, Heritage Hall was 6 of 12 from long range.

The Jackets, meanwhile, were just 3 of 11.

Stone and Cortes combined for four free throws to close the half as the Jackets trailed 27-20.

“It seemed they hit everything in the first half and we missed everything,” Reese said. “So to look up and be down only seven didn’t feel bad.”

The coaching staff of Reese, Chris Combs and Danny Green preached to the team to stay the course in the second half.

“They were saying our defense was good in the first half, but they had just hit some contested 3’s,” Daugherty said. “They said to just worry about the next play and not let them making tough shots get in our head.”

Birdwell said, like any big game, doubt had made an appearance in his mind.

However, so did reality.

“Us starters have talked all year about how nobody can hang with us for a whole game and we were all confident that if we just kept playing, we’d come out on top,” he said.

Reese said he knew the start of the third quarter was important.

“You don’t want to give up a quick run and find yourself down 12 or 14 points,” he said.

The Jackets needed less than a minute to pull within four points, but couldn’t dig deep enough into Heritage Hall’s lead.

Sebastian Perry’s 3-pointer at the 1:13 mark pushed the Chargers to a 36-28 advantage.

That’s when Stone countered with his own trey.

“I think that one gets overlooked,” Reese said. “We really needed that shot.”

Then it was Ridenour’s turn.

When it fell through, his teammates and the large Kingfisher contingent behind the bench erupted.

They knew... and they let Ridenour know.

“Any made shot on a stage like that is a big one, especially in a defensive battle like it was,” Ridenour said. “But it didn’t hit me that it was a game changer until I looked at the crowd and my teammates.

“We took that momentum and carried it into the fourth.”

After Alexander put his team up four points, KHS went on an 11-0 run.

Cortes scored nine of them.

After Heritage Hall won its semifinal game against Webster, the Charger student section chanted “We want Bijan...We want Bijan.”

They got all of him as he delivered a game-high 23 points to go with seven rebounds and three assists.

He was later named the tournament MVP by The Oklahoman staff.

“It’s special winning a state championship with such great people and leaving as a winner,” Cortes said. “It just made it even better with it being my last game.”

After Cortes put the Jackets back on top, the defense held the Chargers on the other end, despite Cortes picking up his fourth foul with 5:45 to go.

“Once we got the lead and once Bijan got his fourth foul, we decided to spread it out,” Reese said. “And once that happened, you could see they (Heritage Hall) were really unsure of what to do...whether to try to come trap us or let us hold it.”

The Chargers eventually went with the former and that led to a Birdwell jumper in the lane for a 41-38 edge with 3:50 to go.

Then another defensive stop was followed by a pair of Cortes free throws.

The sequence repeated itself and KHS led 45-38 with 1:35 showing on the clock.

Alexander, who could do no wrong in the first two quarters, had no answer in the second half.

Ridenour made it so, which wouldn’t have been a possibility earlier in his career.

“Two years ago, because he shot it so well, we thought he could get considerable varsity minutes even though we were loaded,” Reese said. “But, physically and defensively, he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t super athletic, he was small and he wasn’t strong.

“You can’t say that about him now.”

That’s because Ridenour made it his mission to be more than a spot shooter.

“Defense was definitely my worst attribute my sophomore year,” he said.

He was better as a junior as KHS went 26-1 and qualified for state, which never happened.

Ridenour continued to work.

“It was a huge priority going into my senior year to become a better defensive player,” Ridenour said, “because I need to be able to guard at the next level if I wanted a chance.”

Alexander is next level with his dozens of Division I offers and more than 2,000 career points. He scored 27 of them — 24 in the second half — as a freshman when Heritage Hall won the 2018 championship game.

This time around, however, he was 1 of 7 from the floor in the second half and finished with 18 points.

It was reminiscent of 2019 when another KHS senior flustered Alexander, then a sophomore, as KHS avenged 2018’s title game loss with a 59-39 victory in the rematch.

“Maverick pulled a Reece Lafferty,” Reese said. “That’s what Reece was known for and Maverick duplicated it.”

Alexander’s teammates followed suit. Just as coaches predicted, the supporting staff couldn’t keep up the first-half fire.

The Chargers were 1 of 8 from 3-point range and 6 of 19 overall in the second half.

“We were going to make someone else beat us,” Reese said. “We tried in the first half and they made everything. It finally began to pay off in the second.”

Only four Chargers scored in the game as Cj. Smith and Perry added eight points apiece.

Melvin Swindle, the defensive tackle on the football team who’s headed to Eastern Michigan, scored six points, but caused his share of issues by clogging up the lane. That was eliminated

That was eliminated with 3:23 to play when Stone drew a charge on Swindle, which was his fifth foul.

KHS outscored the Chargers 7-2 the rest of the way.

After Heritage Hall took its largest lead in the second quarter, KHS outscored the Chargers 32-13 over the final 18:35.

That included a 20-4 manhandling over the last 9:13.

The 40 points was Heritage Hall’s lowest output of the season - just as it was in the 2019 title game.

In three state tournament games, Kingfisher held opponents to 107 points, setting the record for the lowest three-game totalby any state tournament team ever.

It breaks Kingfisher’s 2019 mark of 109. That broke the Jackets’ 2017 record.

The cliché is that defense wins championships. The Jackets now have three gold balls to prove it.

“Defense takes a lot of effort,” Reese said. “We’ve had guys who were willing to put forward that effort every night and it showed up even more in the biggest games.”

After some of that effort, Stone grabbed two big late offensive rebounds and was 3 of 4 from the foul line in the final minute.

His free throws with 33.3 seconds left made it a three-possession game at 47-40.

“I wanted the ball in my hands because I’m confident in myself to hit the clutch free throws at the end,” said Stone, a University of North Texas signee who was named to the all-tournament team.

Stone scored 15 points to go with 10 rebounds.

“It felt amazing to do that on that type of stage,” Stone said.

He was a freshman when Kingfisher’s undefeated season was ruined by the Chargers in 2018.

He played a big role in returning the favor in 2019.

“With this being such a big rivalry between us, it felt even better to have that type of game,” Stone said.

Birdwell scored four points and had three rebounds for the Jackets.

Ridenour scored six points.

They were sophomores who mostly cheered from the bench when the Jackets won their last championship.

“I told my dad before the game that I wanted to get my own ring,” Birdwell said. “When he pointed out that I already had one, I said, `Nah, that one isn’t really mine’

“Yes, I played a part on that team, but I wanted one where I could say I started on a state championship team.”

Ridenour wanted it for himself, but also guys like Aryan Haro and Harrison Themer who saw their senior seasons cut short a year ago.

“We didn’t get a chance to play last year, so we had to win it for those seniors who didn’t get a chance at that feeling.”

Daugherty sat out his freshman year to concentrate on baseball. That equated into signing to play at Oklahoma State University last fall.

However, he came back out for basketball as a junior and earned a starting spotby the end of last season.

He didn’t score a point in the state title game, but his presence was felt.

“Ian’s job isn’t to score. He’s running around setting screens, grabbing boards and trying to get to the loose ball,” Reese said.

“That’s his mission and he’s good at it.”

Playing basketball turned a busy lifestyle for Daugherty into a chaotic one at times.

“Deciding to play made some things difficult, like getting my baseball work in after practice or forcing myself to get up and lift after late away games,” he said.

“But ending our season the way we did makes all those sacrifices worth it. I wouldn’t trade these last two years of basketball for the world.”

Daugherty grabbed the final defensive rebound - one of four - then later found the ball in his hands to dribble out the final seconds.

“Honestly I didn’t expect the ball to be in my hands,” he said. “But hearing the buzzer sound and realizing we were state champs is like nothing I’ve felt before.”

Daugherty and Stone were soon buried at the bottom of the celebratory dogpile.

“Even though I was being smashed, it was the happiest feeling I’ve ever felt,” Daugherty said.

Soon the Jackets were collecting their second state championship of the night. Before the game, KHS was awarded the 4A boys academic state championship.

They had an average GPA of 3.89.

“The reason we’re able to do as much as we do on the court is because they’re not just really good players, but very smart, well-rounded kids,” Reese said. “Their abilities really opened up a lot of things for us.”

The Jackets finished the season with a 25-1 record. They ended it where they started: Ranked No. 1.

Birdwell has been a fouryear letterman.

Stone and Cortes are four-year starters.

Their record over that span: 107-4.

Itbegan in 2018 and 2019 when they were joined by the likes of Lafferty and Jett Sternberger and Trey Green. The latter two are now playing collegiately.

Their classmates joined the fray as major contributors last season as Stone and Cortes took over leadership roles.

“Although Bijan and I were major parts of the team, we couldn’thave done it without our teammates,” Stone said.

“These last four years will never be forgotten. It was an incredible journey.”

Stone spent four years going full bore. He was the epitome of intensity.

Cortes was more laid back and almost effortlessly schooled opponents.

Together, they never lost more than one game in a season and have the highest winning percentage (.964) of any four-year starters in Oklahoma.

Ever.

Not to mention, there are two gold balls and a silver one to go along with the “what if” of 2020.

“It’s been great every year,” Cortes said. “We’ve had great teammates and a great coaching staff and they only set us up for success.

“So it’s been crazy fun.”

Class 4A Championship

Kingfisher 48

Heritage Hall 40

13 14 9 4 - 40 Heritage Hall

9 14 14 - 48 Kingfisher 11

Heritage Hall -Trey Alexander 18, C.J. Smith 8, Sebastian Perry 8, Melvin Swindle 6.

Kingfisher - Bijan Cortes 23, Matthew Stone 15, Maverick Ridenour 6, Jarret Birdwell 4.