The half-court buzzer-beater to beat your biggest rival. Every basketball player dreams of that moment.
On Friday, Jan. 10, Taven Jenkins got to live it.
In front of a packed gym at Chaska High School, the Chanhassen senior’s half-court heave at the buzzer banked in, resulting in a 75-72 victory for the Storm over their District 112 rival, Chaska.
Chanhassen, playing without seniors Riley Johnson and Mikan Pelowski, led for the majority of the game. Jenkins hit a number of key jump shots in the first half, and senior John Schmidt had a stretch in which he scored on four possessions in a row.
Chaska was led in the first half by junior guard Marquis Connell, who had the hot hand with 11 points, including three made three-pointers. Senior captain Noah Slinde added some key baskets as well, but the Hawks would trail Chanhassen at the break 39-33.
The Storm would extend their lead in the early part of the second half before Chaska mounted a large comeback spurred by star sophomore Tyler Forrest and senior captain Jimmy Coddington.
The Hawks would cut the lead to 1 on several occasions, but Chanhassen kept denying the Hawks the lead late in the second half.
Chan sophomore Bennett Barger threw down a strong slam dunk, junior Nathan Ramler hit a key three-pointer, and junior Brady Hemingson, often the shortest player on the court, came up with a couple of key offensive rebounds and put-backs and consistently made hustle play after hustle play.
In the final minutes of the game, Chaska got key baskets from Forrest and Coddington, and forced Chanhassen into multiple turnovers.
With less than four seconds on the clock, sophomore Kalin Jochum tied the game on a muscular layup in the paint.
That set up Jenkins’s heroic shot. The Chan senior took an inbound pass from Kolby Christl, and with Forrest defending, heaved one up from the half-court stripe at the buzzer.
The same shot that every player practices for fun several times at every basketball practice banked in, and the Storm won round one of this year’s rivalry over the Hawks.
