Carroll boys pull off upset of Southeast

A long time ago, Bishop Carroll senior guard Max Iseman started pushing.

Before any balls were rolled out, before any practices started, he was there. He ran off the pounds that held him back last season — 42 of them, by his count, with some help from joining the cross-country team in the fall — and kept getting shots up when no one was looking.

Friday night, after Iseman’s career-high 23 points helped Carroll stun visiting Southeast 71-62, there existed a very real, tangible example of his hard work.

That is, a win.

“He’s probably our hardest-working kid, and it’s taken a lot to get him to be the best he can be,” Carroll coach Lonnie Lollar said. “And he’s still working. Still pushing himself every day to get better. Tonight was that shining moment for him ... just so proud of this young man right now.”

Iseman had some help — fellow senior Eric Scharping chipped in with 21 points and 10 rebounds — as the Golden Eagles’ threw a major wrench in the race for the City League championship.

Southeast (14-3, 10-3) dropped into a tie with East for second place and fell two games behind Heights in the standings with three regular-season games left, including next Friday’s showdown against Heights at Southeast. Heights has four regular-season games left.

“Just lack of mental preparation coming in,” Southeast coach Melvin Herring said. “Bishop Carroll showed up, executed their game plan, stalled the ball and managed the clock really well. It took us out of our transition game ... we just didn’t show up tonight.”

Two plays in the second quarter were key factors in the game’s outcome. First, Southeast senior guard and two-time City League scoring champion Jerrick Harding got tangled up and twisted his ankle, came out of the game and went right back in but played the rest of the game with a slight limp.

Harding still finished with 28 points, but was less than 100 percent the rest of the way.

Second, Iseman nailed an off-balance three-pointer at the buzzer to tie the score 23-23 at halftime.

“Hitting that shot at the end of the half really got me going,” Iseman said. “It seemed like, after that, the rim got bigger and my teammates kept feeding me. I just felt it.”

Carroll (9-8, 7-6) kept its foot on the pedal in the third quarter, taking a 35-29 lead on a three-pointer by Zack Goodman, and going up 44-36 headed into the fourth quarter after Iseman hit a driving bank shot with time winding down.

And while the Eagles struggled at times to contain Harding and Southeast sophomore Israel Barnes (26 points), they found other ways to scrap for the win. They outrebounded Southeast 29-14 and held the rest of the Buffaloes’ roster to eight points.

“We knew they were going to hit shots,” Scharping said. “You can’t keep the City League’s leading scorer to just nothing ... you’ve got to try and help out. It worked some, but not really, so that’s something we need to work on.

“Hopefully this gives us momentum going into our game against (Kapaun) on Tuesday, and to finish out the season strong and into the postseason.”

Southeast cut the lead to 60-55 with 1:54 left on a basket by Barnes, but Carroll’s Luke Evans (11 points) hit 5 of 6 free throws down the stretch to help seal the win.

“We’ve had a challenging week, with a couple of tough losses,” Lollar said. “Hopefully this is the kind of game that can make us go in the right direction.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 10:41 PM with the headline "Carroll boys pull off upset of Southeast."