STARKE - It was perhaps a fitting end to a tumultuous and frustrating season for the Perlis High School boys basketball team. Friday night, in the first round of the Cedar Valley District Tournament, Perlis surrendered the game and its entire season without firing a single shot. Trailing Starke by a point with less than a minute to go, the Blue Knights had the ball but failed to attempt a shot before time expired, falling 64-63 to their cross-valley rivals.

"We just passed it and passed it," said Perlis coach Doug Way of the final 48 seconds. "There must have been nine, ten, eleven passes there. Maybe more. I'll have to check the film. Everybody touched it, but nobody wanted to step up and take that big shot."

Perlis took a timeout with 48 seconds remaining, another timeout with 21 seconds remaining, and final timeout with nine seconds left.

"Each time, we drew up a good play," said Way, whose daughter, Cassandra, was born in November without arms. "But I could see my guys were rattled, I could see the fear. These guys don't have any guts. They have two arms but it's a situation where they have no guts."

When the buzzer sounded, the ball was in the hands of Blue Knight senior captain Trevor Basham, who led the team in scoring with 19 points and whose mother and father sat in different sections of the gymnasium. "I got the ball with about four or five seconds left," said Basham, who sobbed in the musty visitors locker room after the game. "I was just scared to shoot. just really scared. I kind of locked up. Then I tried to find someone to pass to, but it was too late."

"Winning is boring," said Clarence Block, my first editor, before he died alone at age 54 from a heart attack. "You want the story, go to the losers' locker room."

For most of the game, it looked like it was going to be the Blue Knights' night. Basham, whose father has been sleeping on a cot in the basement for a year, scored 11 points in the third quarter and Perlis opened up a 59-46 lead with one quarter to go.

"[Golly Moses], I love that little girl of mine," said Way, rubbing away tears with the palm of his hand. "You can't tell me she's not perfect. To me, she's a perfect angel from Heaven."

Starke roared back in the final quarter behind the strong interior play of the Cedar Valley District MVP Josh Stetson, a fundamentally sound and nicely proportioned center who scored 13 in the quarter and finished with game-high totals in both points (24) and rebounds (14).

"We had no answer for Stetson," Way said of the Bobcats' 6-foot 8-inch forward. "That kid is good. I always look for a reason to hate that guy and it's a deal where I can't find one. He seems like a nice kid and he's a heck of a player."

With 6:34 remaining in the fourth quarter, Stetson tipped in a missed shot to break the CVD season scoring mark set by Perlis star Johnny Dill in 1978. Dill was not in attendance on Thursday. He lives in a trailer in the woods and rarely comes into town anymore. He makes dioramas, which are these little scenes in boxes.

"When I see people or when I get out into open spaces, my heart just starts racing and I feel like I'm going to pass out," said Dill in a rare interview conducted two years ago through an open window in his trailer, "I have my dogs and my dioramas. I do OK out here. You should go now."

Stetson then scored on Starke's next four possessions to pull the Bobcats to within four points at 61-57 with 3:43 remaining.

The Blue Knights' second-leading scorer, sophomore guard Jeff Lassiter, who came into the tournament averaging 15.6 points per game, missed four free throws down the stretch and finished with just two points on 1-for-7 shooting and six turnovers.

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