As Conor Harkins caught the ball at 25 feet away from the hoop with five seconds left in overtime of Tuesday’s first-round CIAC State playoff game, there was little Stamford High could do but watch their season come down to a final shot in dramatic fashion.
Tied at 52 each, Harkins jab stepped to his right, then took one step and dribble to his left and lined up a long-distance shot that sent the No. 20 seeded Greenwich High to the second round of the Class LL playoffs with the 55-52 win over FCIAC rival and No. 13 seed Stamford High.
“I wanted the ball at the end of overtime,” Harkins said following the game. “I didn’t have my greatest game, but I felt that I could hit that shot. As soon as I had the ball, I knew it was going in. I knew what I was doing.”
Harkins, a junior, described the shot as the biggest he’s ever hit in his career.
Conor Harkins lifts Greenwich over Stamford 55-52 with this OT game winner in first round of LL’s #ctbb pic.twitter.com/eBoxhupRz1
— Evan Triantafilidis (@EvanTria47) March 9, 2016
“Our big motto coming in to this was payback,” Harkins said.
The 6-foot-1 guard was tightly guarded by Stamford’s Yan Carlos Marte and he was again held to under double-digit points in regulation of the game. He scored just seven points in their regular season meeting where the Black Knights topped GHS 48-37.
Harkins finished with 11 points on the night and his final three secured a second-round matchup with No. 4 seed Weaver High School on Thursday,
Kieran Carroll scored 13 points while both Joseph Lanni and Ryan Clark added 10 points. Mike Gianopoulos added seven points with a strong effort on the glass for the Cardinals.
For Stamford, Jay DeVito finished with a game-high 21 points, Carlos-Marte added 11, and Nii Pobee scored eight points.
“I don’t want our players to take the result of tonight and let it be the judge of their season,” said Stamford’s head coach Danny Melzer. “What they accomplished this year is far and away greater than what the result was tonight.”
Entering the fourth quarter as a one-point game, Greenwich had let Stamford march back from a 10-point deficit in the second quarter and eventually the Black Knights were exchanging the lead with the Cardinals for most of the second half.
With just under three minutes left in regulation, Greenwich came out of a timeout with Harkins’ second-biggest shot of the day — a three-pointer to swing the lead back to Greenwich’s favor 46-45.
Stamford’s Pobee went 1-for-2 from the free throw line to tie the game back at 46-46.
With under a minute left, DeVito hit both of his free throws to bring the Black Knights up by two.
Greenwich’s following possession would result in a Henry Golden pass to an open Robert Clark who found himself underneath the hoop and made the game-tying basket.
In the overtime session, Carroll would add four points — one bucket coming off an offensive rebound and tip while the other basket came from a Gianopoulos assist.
It was DeVito who spun through the lane making a highly-contested running layup to bring the game to a dead heat at 52-52 with 21 seconds left in the game. The senior would not go out without a fight.
Greenwich would fight to get the ball in Harkin’s hands, as Heaton recalled, it was the play Harkins had asked for despite the low numbers against FCIAC foe Stamford.
“Conor said get me the ball and I’ll make the shot,” said GHS head coach Pat Heaton. “He hit two big shots when it counted. They did a great job defending him and we had some other kids step up tonight. I thought we had a couple of lapses in the second half, but in overtime we did a nice job to adapting to what they were doing.”
