As the clock trickled under 2 minutes left to play in the EPC boys basketball championship game, one of the event staff headed to media row to collect the MVP ballots. When one media member protested that the game wasn’t over yet, the staffer replied, “C’mon, you know who’s going to win. If you want to put down someone from Northampton just in case, go ahead.”

The K-Kids trailed top-seeded Pocono Mountain West 49-43 and it appeared that their Cinderella run through the tournament was going to come end. Agonizingly so, because they had led by 10 points with 3:30 left in the third period, only to see West tie the game by the end of the quarter and then roar out to lead by as much as 8 in the fourth.

But as Lee Corso famously says, “Not so fast my friend.” The Kids started making shots. The Panthers started missing every other free throw. Northampton clawed its way back one possession at a time.

A Leo Regec bucket. One West free throw. Five points.

Noah Walakovits for two. One West free throw. Four points.

Walakovits left open at the top of the arc. Catch. Deep breath. Three-pointer. One West free throw. Two points. 11.9 seconds left.

The Kids moved the ball to half court and called timeout to set up their final play. It was designed for Walakovits, but when he was denied, the ball wound up in Brady Simock’s hands driving down the left side of the lane. He found Korbin Sollars on the right block and Sollars laid it up and over Panthers’ star Adrian Brito to send the game to overtime.

A Walakovits free throw gave the Kids an early 1-point lead. After a few long possessions by both teams, West got a layup from Jonathan Mateo to go up 54-53. Regec responded with two free throws with 45 seconds left in OT. The Northampton defense never allowed a potential game winning shot to get off.

The Konkrete Kids claimed their first league title in boys basketball in 52 years, 55-54.

Regec led the K-Kids with 21 points, including 5 three-pointers and was named MVP. Whether any media members had to redo their votes is lost to history.

Regec described the pressure of taking shots in a title game, “I would say it does feel different, but at the end of the day, it’s the same shot, the same routine. Just gotta knock it down. It’s a bigger game, but you gotta stay locked in, hit the shot, and win the game.”

Simock, a junior captain who scored all 6 of the Kids first period points, described the process of going from a team that was struggling at 9-8 to become league champions, “Listen, we were going through some ups and downs in the middle of the season. Coach Cheeks told us three things, effort, intensity, and physicality. If we do all those things, we’re gonna go all the way and we did.”

Head coach Matt Scholl described the feeling of breaking the long championship drought, “We’ve had opportunities. I’ve gotta give coach Stampone a lot of credit. He came in and changed the culture of the program. We played in two district championship games. We made a run at states. We were always so close and we just couldn’t get over the edge.”

He continued, “So to do this now, it feels good. I want to do it more. It’s been a long run and we’ve won a lot of basketball games. In the beginning it was a little frustrating because of how we were playing because I knew we had more in us. I still think we have more in us.”