THE TEE PEE — Choctaw senior Camry Johnson was mobbed by teammates first and then the Big Green student section, who stormed the court and hoisted him onto their shoulders before he was beckoned for an interview with WEAR’s Dan Shugart.
To steal from his words, “It was like a movie.”
Johnson’s only field goal of the night proved to be the game-winner, the 6-foot-1 senior collecting a pass from Kedar Washington on the left wing and draining a 23-footer at the buzzer to lift the Big Green to a much-needed, 66-65 win over crosstown rival Fort Walton Beach.
“I was just ready. I saw it swing to me, looked at the clock and knew I had to get it off quick,” Johnson said. “It felt nice as soon it as it left my hands. When I saw it go in, I just immediately ran and everyone chased me. I just embraced it. Everybody just came and showered me with love.
“It was like a movie.”
Pandemonium. Court storming. Disbelief from the Fort Walton Beach sideline and coach Chris Carswell, who’d watched his 12-6 Vikings overcome a 54-45 fourth-quarter deficit only to cough up opportunity after opportunity down the stretch to put the game away, including a turnover on an inbounds with 14 seconds left to set up Johnson.
Choctaw coach John Barnes was loving all of it. After four years as a Viking starter and former Daily News Player of the Year, the FWB alumnus never thought he’d be on the opposite sideline in this rivalry. But in the offseason the Big Green came calling, and Friday offered a the perfect jolt for a team with four straight losses but also much better than its 7-9 record indicates.
“We needed a win bad. To do it in this fashion and to do it here against our rival, that’s huge,” Barnes said. “We’ve lost four in a row and this kind of makes it feel like that’s what those four losses were for, you know? We had to go through that to get here.”
As most of the country’s athletic rooting interests centered around a non-competitive College Football Playoff Peach Bowl between Indiana and Oregon, the small town of Fort Walton Beach showed up in droves to sell out Chocatw’s Tee Pee and give the two teams a stage befitting of the Panhandle’s oldest rivalry.
“A big part of the love you see here is the ties to the community,” Barnes said. “So I coached at Bruner (Middle School) before here, so I coached a lot of those guys. So for me to be here, and a lot of my teammates, I coached against them. So we all know each other. So it just kind of makes for, like, a really competitive game. And then, after the game, to kind of see the guys, there really wasn’t as much tension as it felt like in the game. They all play travel together, like it’s a community thing, but you know once we get them between the lines, we obviously want to win.”
And the Big Green did… barely. And it was so much more than Johnson’s stroke from beyond the arc that lifted Choctaw to its biggest win since, well, probably the 2021 Final 4 victory over Leesburg.
On a night when Mike Collins fouled out early and Blaze Childers gathered three first-quarter fouls to play limited minutes and finish with only nine points, Washington scored 17 points and delivered nine assists, a banged-up Reece Jones fought played through a collision and trainer session for 16 points and 11 rebounds, and Isaiah Oates added 13 points and the early contender for shot of the night before Johnson’s clutch genes kicked in.
With Choctaw up 16-12 in the first quarter following a brilliant sequence kickstarted by a Collins steal that led to a Jones leaner off the glass and then a charge taken on the end by Washington, the Big Green inbounded the ball to Oates with 2 seconds left. The junior collected the pass at the free line, dribbled and took two giant steps before hoisting the two-handed prayer. Buckets.
Leo Ivison brought Fort Walton Beach back with 10 straight points to end the half and bring the Viking deficit to 34-32, but Jones scored seven points in the third quarter to increase Choctaw’s lead to 54-47. Then, like rivalries tend to devolve into, chaos ensued.
Ivison’s 4-point play made it 56-51 with 6 minutes to play, Rodric Starks took a steal coast-to-coast to make it a one-possession game and Jataevion Jones scored inside to cap the 8-0 run. After a Childers free throw, Christian Coley’s putback knotted things and Jordan Lee scored three straight for Fort Walton’s biggest lead of the night at 60-57. The Vikings would later lead 64-61, but self-inflicted mistakes cost them.
Starks, who had a game-high 18 points, missed a wide-open breakaway dunk off the back of the rim to make it a two-possession game with 1:09 left to play, and later he missed a free throw to extend the lead to 66-63 with 29 seconds left. Starks, who was a defensive lockdown force with four blocks and four steals, seemingly sealed the win with a charge with 14 seconds left and a two-point Vikings lead, but the ensuing inbounds Childers tried to throw the inbounds off the back of Reece Jones and it found the hands of Washington. Washington found Jones, who kicked it back to Washington at the top of the key, and then Johnson flashed open on the left wing.
Ball game.
“This game, all the fans and all the trash talk, this just brings out the best in all of us,” Johnson said. “I always get doubted, but I came through for us.”
This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Camry Johnson’s buzzer beater lifts Choctaw to well-timed win over FWB
Reporting by Seth Stringer, Northwest Florida Daily News / Northwest Florida Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
