St. Gerard surged ahead of Vanguard one too many times in Tuesday night’s TAPPS Class 3A bi-district game.

After spending the entire night coming from behind, the Vikings came up one rally short in overtime in a 57-51 loss.

“We were prepared for this,” Vanguard coach Will Curtis said. “Five of our six district games were decided by one or two points. That’s one of the things I tried to tell them was that this is nothing new for us. I had all the confidence in the world we would win this game.”

Vanguard’s Berkley Bonjonia (right) goes up for a shot over St. Gerard’s Xavier Brown in the second half.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

Xavier Brown scored 29 points for St. Gerard, and the Royals made nine of 10 free throws in the extra session to put the game away.

The contest was tied nine times, and the Royals scored the next basket on every occasion. That kept Vanguard playing from behind or even for most of the evening, but rarely from ahead.

The Vikings jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the game’s first 30 seconds and led 29-28 at halftime after a Larson Wayman 3-pointer with less than a minute to go in the first half.

But the Royals tied the score with a free throw early in the third quarter and proceeded on an 8-0 spurt to make it a 36-29 advantage.

Vanguard immediately fired back, with a Ted Parish 3-pointer paving the way for a 7-0 Viking run that evened the score again, and the game went into the fourth quarter tied at 38.

The last eight minutes of regulation was more of the same, with the teams fighting back and forth, but neither controlling the game for any lengthy stretches of time.

Brown put in a 15-foot jumper fading toward the baseline with 1:39 left to put St. Gerard in front, 46-44. Wayman answered by faking a 3-point shot and getting his defender in the air before rolling to the free-throw line for a jumper to make it a 46-all battle with 1:14 left.

That’s when Vanguard’s defense gave it a chance to win the game.

Drew Raymond forced a five-second closely guarded call, turning the ball back over to Vanguard with 26 seconds remaining.

The Vikings went to Wayman, who scored a team-high 17 points, but he couldn’t shake his defender this time and was forced into a difficult shot that caught only the backboard as time ran out in regulation.

“Our defense has been our calling card all season,” Curtis said. “We got enough stops to have a chance to win it at the end. We (played a lot of close games) and finished with a 17-10 record. I think that speaks to how even if we’re down in the second half or the fourth quarter, we’re never out of a game.”

In overtime, the Royals scored the first three points from the line before Brown drove for a layup to open up a 51-46 advantage.

Berkley Bonjonia — who played big for Vanguard, especially on the boards in the second half and finished with 11 points and 12 rebounds — made a layup to get the Vikings on the overtime scoreboard with 1:27 left. But that’s as close as they got, as the Royals nailed their last six free throws to slam the door shut.

San Antonio St. Gerard’s Richard Garcia (left) and Jerrell Wilkins (35) pressure Vanguard’s Pfavery Bennett in the second half of their TAPPS Class 3A playoff game Tuesday night.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

The game’s pattern of St. Gerard pulling ahead only to be caught was established early on.

The Vikings scored the game’s first four points, only to watch Brown explode for eight straight on a variety of closely contested midrange jumpers. 

“We have Xavier Denton at (Texas Christian Academy) in our district, so we played him twice,” Curtis said. “I hadn’t seen St. Gerard play. I had heard about Brown, but I didn’t really think he would be as good or maybe even better than Denton. So my eyes were opened early. It was an incredible performance from him.”

Jonathan Hernandez added a three-point play, and Treyvon Williams knocked down a 15-footer to turn a 4-0 deficit just 30 seconds into the game into a 13-4 advantage.

But an ever-changing assortment of zone defenses geared to slow Brown down combined with Wayman coming alive on offense brought the Vikings back.

Wayman drove baseline for an uncontested layup, then drilled a 3-pointer from the corner on the next possession to draw Vanguard back within four at 15-11.

It was a 17-13 margin for St. Gerard at the end of the first quarter, and the teams essentially spent most of the second trading scores.

Vanguard pulled even at 19 apiece on a Pfavery Bennett putback with 5:29 left in the first half, and the game was tied twice more before intermission.

Both times, it was the Royals who broke the tie, but a Wayman 3-pointer from the left wing with less than a minute to go in the first half handed the Vikings their first lead since the opening minute and that 29-28 advantage held up as the teams headed into the locker room.

Parish scored 10 points for Vanguard, while St. Gerard got 11 from Richard Garcia.

“This was a resilient group all season,” Curtis said. “We never lost faith at all. We got punched in the mouth early in the game, but we just kept fighting, scratching and clawing. We just couldn’t ever get over that hump.”

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