Hart Break Puts Indians Back in ‘70s

Hart High’s failure to get past the second round in the boys’ basketball playoffs is so well-known . . . that it seemed to have been forgotten.

The popular question of the night--when was the last time the Indians advanced past the second round--was never really answered until Hart beat Royal, 56-49, in the Southern Section Division I-A playoffs Tuesday night at Royal.

Seventeen years? Twenty years? A hundred years? Finally, a Hart administrator stepped forward and said it hadn’t happened since 1970. Or so he thought.

Twenty-seven years.

“Seriously?” asked Hart forward Cory Johnson, who played some serious basketball in the fourth quarter, scoring eight of his 15 points and making all four of his free throws.

“I guess we broke the jinx.”

But not without some high jinks, including a gravity-defying dunk midway through the third quarter by Mark Halverson.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” said Halverson, who had 16 points and 11 rebounds. “I wasn’t planning on it. It just sort of happened.”

In December, Royal beat Hart (23-5), the third-ranked team in The Times’ regional poll, by a score of 53-35 at the Indians’ tournament, but the Highlanders couldn’t repeat the feat because they couldn’t shoot consistently.

Royal Coach Larry Wiksell was feeling nauseous and missed the game, which might have been a blessing in the first half, when the Highlanders (16-12) made six of 24 shots and trailed by as many 13 en route to a 25-18 halftime deficit.

At halftime, Wiksell talked on the phone from his home to Royal’s assistant coaches and advised a half-court trap, which worked for a while, but wasn’t the answer.

Halverson’s layup with 5:17 left in the game gave Hart its biggest lead, 46-30, and Royal deployed a full-court press with better success. The Highlanders could have cut the lead to five with a minute left, but Nick Flanagan missed a three-pointer.

Flanagan had 18 points for Royal and Ryan Nielsen added 16, but the number that really counted was 27.