Dixon's 3 lifts Christ Church past Fox Creek 52-49 for AAA boys basketball title
Cavaliers claim school's first ever AAA state championship since move
Columbia – Since Dr. James Naismith hung that first beach basket in 1891 in creating the game of basketball, billons upon billons of boys and girls have dreamed of hitting that game-winning shot to help his or her team claim a championship. Considering the sheer number of people who have acted out the sports fantasy, relatively few have actually experienced that thrill.
You can add Christ Church Episcopal School’s David Dixon to that list.
The 6-foot-5-inch Dixon drained a 3-point shot from the right corner with seven seconds remaining in the game and saw a trey from Fox Creek’s Kobe Sims come up short as the Cavaliers won the AAA boys state championship on Friday at Colonial Life Arena.
“It didn’t feel real,” said Dixon, a senior who ended up leading the Cavaliers in scoring with 12 points with his game-winning trifecta. “It was the biggest bucket ever of my career, no doubt.”
CCES finished the season with a 26-1 record. The triumph gave Christ Church its first ever South Carolina High School League AAA state championship in any sport since moving to the classification two years ago due to the multiplier rule.
“It means everything to me,” senior Reid Hipp said of winning the title, the program’s third in four years and fourth in six years. “It’s the first AAA championship in anything for our school. It’s remarkable.”
Hipp actually missed out on an opportunity to help improve CCES’ chances of winning when he missed two free throws with 33 seconds remaining in the game to leave the score at 49-46. The Predators’ Chanze Allen snagged the rebound. They quickly got the ball downcourt and found Keori Atwell wide open in the right corner. He too drained a 3 to tie the game at 49-49 with 25 seconds to go.
Both teams had one timeout left, but neither Christ Church head coach John Butler nor FC head coach Tim Butler chose to use it.
“I was there on the sideline, ‘Do I call a timeout or do I let them play,’ “ John Butler said. “You know the old philosophy if you call a timeout you let the defense get set. We always tell the shooters to get to the corners, the guards to get to the rim, and they did what we’ve practiced to do every day.”
After slowly retrieving the ball and initially struggling to get it inbounds, the Cavaliers pushed the ball up the floor. Hipp got the ball on the third pass. He was to the left of the basket about 15 feet out and had a defender on him. He saw a wide-open Dixon in the right corner in front of CCES’ home bench and got the ball to him. Dixon canned the trey with seven seconds to go.
“We were just getting the ball down the floor,” Hipp said. “I was thinking about putting it up myself, but I saw David and I knew David wasn’t going to miss that 3, so I got it to him.”
Fox Creek didn’t stop the clock, instead hurriedly pushing it up the floor. Sims did a great job of creating a 3-point opportunity at the top of the key, but the shot came up short as the buzzer sounded.
Fox Creek’s Butler said he was mistaken for not using the timeout after either one of the 3-pointers.
“I made some mistakes,” he said. “Those boys did everything they were asked to do for me all year long. Those are tremendous kids. I hate it for my seniors, but we’ll be back. I let them down tonight.”
Dixon, who was wise enough to get back on defense after hitting the basket, then did his celebrating. He sprinted to the other end of the court by the Christ Church bench with his teammates chasing him. When he finally ran out of room to run, the team jumped up and down in jubilation around him.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, it felt good,” Dixon said o the winning bucket. “I was confident I had it. It means a lot. People dream about those moments all throughout their childhood, all throughout their careers.
“To hit that shot in the last game of my career, my last game playing for Coach Butler and winning a state championship, it was huge.”
Dixon’s make was the only one in four 3-point attempts. He snagged three rebounds and had two blocked shots.
Senior Jonathan Perry was the only other double-figure scorer for the Cavaliers, finishing with 10 points to go with six rebounds and four assists. However, CCES got plenty of points from other sources.
Hipp, also a senior, finished with nine points and six rebounds, Senior Anthony Atkins had eight points and seven rebounds, senior Jude Hall had eight points, four rebounds and two blocks, and freshman Ty Young had five points and three rebound.
Junior Randy Robinson led Fox Creek in both scoring and rebounding with 13 points and eght boards, respectively. Junior Justin Vining had nine points, while Atwell, a senior, finished with eight.
Sims and Allen, who were averaging a combined 27 points a game, were held to just 10 points. Allen had six points and seven rebounds, while Sims had four points, three assists and three rebounds.
Junior Chuck Schwarz had six points, six rebounds and two blocks, while senior Jason Rogers had three points.
There was a bit of back and forth in the early going of the game. However, Fox Creek began to open things up a bit. The Predators scored seven of the last eight points in the first quarter with a Robinson layup with three seconds left making it 19-12.
FC took its biggest lead of the game at 21-13 on a Schwarz layup with 5:39 left in the second quarter. It led 23-16 with 3:45 to go in the first half following a Vining layup.
Then it was practically nothing for a very long time.
Christ Church tied the game at 23-23 on a 3-pointer by Young just four seconds before halftime. Fox Creek actually scored the first bucket of the second half, an Atwell layup with 7:27 remaining in the third quarter.
The Predators didn’t score until Schwarz hit two free throws with 1:44 left in the third quarter. That meant they had gone 10 minutes of game clock scoring just two points.
“We just didn’t make shots,” Fox Creek’s Butler said. “We kind of got out of character a little bit. Shots we normally make, we didn’t make. A couple of shots could have made the difference.”
Christ Church’s Butler had a different view.
“What you saw was two good defensive teams going at each other,” he said.
