Frenzied finish to D1 boys basketball title game will be remembered for a long time

With the parity that enveloped Division I boys basketball throughout the season, there really was no other way for the championship game to play out.

Just look at these numbers: 10 ties and 17 lead changes. In a season where no team stepped to the front of the pack, neither of the two teams playing in the championship game could do the same, not until the very last second of overtime.

And if the ball bounces a different way, a call goes in the other direction, maybe something completely different happens.

There were two key bounces that had to take place just to set up those crazy final seconds.

The first one came on a 3-point attempt by Andrew Wojciak, who, with his Merrimack High School boys basketball team down by four to Manchester Central, fired up a shot from the corner in front of his team's bench.

Wojciak got the shot off cleanly, but it hit the back of the rim and bounced straight up, high enough to come close to the cable holding up the basket, but far enough out front to miss it and drop through the center of the hoop.

Remember, if the ball does hit anything about the basket, that shot is no good and the game is likely over, with Central up four points, with the ball and 6.8 seconds remaining.

At the other end, after a Merrimack foul, Central's Jaylen Leroy stood at the free throw line with two shots and an opportunity to put the Little Green up three points with 6.1 seconds to play. But Leroy's first attempt hit the front of the rim and came back, and after he made the second, Central led by two, 60-58.

The miss could have been huge. Instead of needing a 3-pointer just to tie the game, Merrimack could try to get to the basket - maybe even get fouled - and tie the game with a layup.

"(Zak) Kerr could have taken the two if he had time, but Leroy did a nice job of slowing him down," Merrimack coach Tim Goodridge said. "Maybe if they’re guarding him hard, Wojo would have been open."

There just wasn't enough time. Kerr raced down the court with the ball, but when Leroy cut off his path to the basket, the ball came free. Merrimack's Noah Beygelman, who entered the game for the first time for that final possession, scooped up the loose ball outside the 3-point line.

"We know the kid that he put in at the very end is a very good shooter," Central coach Doc Wheeler said. "Timmy and I are good friends and we talk about each other's games, so when he came in, I'm yelling at the kids 'he can shoot, he can shoot.' We were just trying to stay in front of him, we didn't want to get beat."

Beygelman took one dribble after he grabbed the ball, squared up to the basket, and took a shot that could have been the biggest in New Hampshire high school basketball history.

Instead, it came less than a second too late.

"I could just tell," Leroy said of whether the shot was going in. "I was under the net and I leaned a little bit, and it was going right in. He hits those kind of shots, so it was tough. Even if there was enough time, I was waving it off. No shot, that's what I was thinking about."

The officials ruled the shot to be no good, and video and pictures that have circulated on Twitter and other social media platforms have backed up the call.

"It wasn't like this is definitely where this is going, it just happened," Goodridge said of the final play. "We gave ourselves an extra shooter to get in there. If we had a fraction of a second more, I think we'd have been a little happier."