It had been nearly six weeks since Breck played a close basketball game. The Mustangs lost that one.
When the Mustangs were forced into another close game Saturday, they fell back on their training.
And they won.
Breck held off a late rally by Lake City to win the Class 2A boys basketball championship game 76-72 at Williams Arena.
After Lake City cut a 12-point deficit to one, Breck sophomore guard DeAngelo Dungey stripped the ball from Jaden Shones in the lane, leading to a fast-break basket by Daniel Freitag with 1:10 left.
"I remember [being told] that we have to value every single play defensively more importantly because anything can happen," Mustangs senior Hanif Muhammad said. "Obviously, we're in the state championship, they're going to give their best effort to win the game. We just stayed disciplined to what we knew we had to do."
Freitag, an All-Metro first-team pick who has signed to play at Wisconsin, finished with a game-high 33 points, including a pair of free throws with two seconds left that sealed the victory.
The top-seeded Mustangs (31-1) forced 12 turnovers in the second half, including nine steals.
"We had a stretch of turnovers that killed us. Otherwise, we played basically a perfect game, what we needed to do to win that game," said Lake City senior Hunter Lorenson, who led the Tigers with 19 points.
The third-seeded Tigers (26-6) had one more opportunity to tie the score with two seconds left, but Mustangs sophomore forward JP Musoke intercepted a pass under the basket.
"Coach Brock [Bertram] took them through a walkthrough today. We walked through that specific backdoor set," Mustangs coach Harry Sonie said. "Having [Musoke] in the right position on that last play and having that be the play they went to and us being prepared for it, that's key."
The Mustangs spent the entire season ranked No. 1 in Class 2A. Only three of their previous victories were by fewer than 10 points. They expected a challenge from the Tigers and got one.
"That was fun," Sonie said. "It's nice to win by 20 or 30, but in a game like that, it's the biggest game in the high school [season] for your state, for your class. … That's a really good team, and we knew exactly what we were coming into tonight. We knew they were going to be physical. They're very skilled. Credit to our guys. We just battled all 36 minutes."
