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Boys’ Basketball: Hague delivers for Sage Hill

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The reputation with the Sage Hill School boys’ basketball team the past two seasons was it couldn’t finish games. Every time the contest was close in the fourth quarter, Sage Hill seemed to wilt.

Tyler Hague was there, he started on the team those two seasons. He helped change the reputation at Sage Hill in his third season on varsity. This season, Hague demonstrated how far the program has come, leading the Lightning to single-season records for overall wins (18) and Academy League wins (nine).

Down the stretch in league play, Hague delivered in the clutch for the Lightning. In two of the final three league contests, Hague lifted Sage Hill to nail-biting victories.

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With 16.1 seconds left and on the road on Feb. 7, Hague converted two free throws against Brethren Christian, ensuring Sage Hill’s 39-37 win, which marked its first triumph against the Warriors in seven seasons. Three days later, in the waning seconds against Crean Lutheran, Hague found himself again in the thick of things.

This time, Hague went from being the would-be goat to the team’s savior.

With the Lightning up by one, a referee called Hague for an offensive foul with 37.1 seconds to go, giving the Saints a chance to go ahead. Before the foul, Beeler had warned Hague, repeating, “Don’t pick up the charge!”

The Saints marched past the Lightning, taking the lead with 14 seconds left. There was enough time for Hague to redeem himself. And the 6-foot-2 senior pulled it off in dramatic fashion at home on senior night.

Krishan Tarsadia got the inbounds pass and dribbled past midcourt. Near the left wing, Tarsadia handed the ball to Hague, and Hague looked up at the clock and saw eight seconds. The forward quickly went to work, dribbling toward the top of the key, before doing what everyone in the gym expected him to do, go to his spin move near the free-throw line.

“When Tyler faced up at top of the key, I said, ‘Oh, this is his moment. This is what dreams are made of,’” Beeler said. “When he hit that turnaround jumper I think the most excited guy in gym might have been Corey Maggette, [our assistant coach and a former NBA player]. I held him back because he jumped on the court. He held someone else back.

“I started jumping [up and down] with [center] Chance [Kuehnel] first. Then I went and found Tyler. I shed a couple of the Crean [Lutheran] players out of my way, and then I ran up and I found Tyler’s big sweaty head and I planted a big kiss on it.”

Teammates and fans mobbed Hague, who kept Sage Hill’s hopes of finishing second in league alive for at least another day with a 50-49 win. Sage Hill won the league finale at Oxford Academy, 60-47, last week, but Hague and the Lightning fell short of producing the school’s best finish in league.

Crean Lutheran edged St. Margaret’s, 68-65, and the two schools shared first at 10-2, leaving Sage Hill in third place at 9-3. Ending up with third forced the Lightning to travel in the opening round of the CIF Southern Section playoffs for the third straight season, and for the third straight time, Hague’s postseason lasted only one round.

Hague and his teammates put up a fight at Loma Linda Academy, eventually suffering an 80-78 setback in double overtime of a Division 5AA first-round game. The loss stung Sage Hill (18-7 overall), which had one last chance to tie the game and send it into triple overtime.

With eight tenths of a second on the clock, Sage Hill, inbounding the ball underneath the basket, tried to go to Hague, who had recorded nine of his 22 points in the two four-minute overtime periods. The team was unable to get a lob to Hague in the middle of the key, and to avoid a five-second violation, Sage Hill inbounded the ball, only to turn it over.

“Our season ended a lot more abruptly than we expected,” said Beeler, who called this team his best during his eight seasons in charge of the Lightning. “Seeing the seniors end their careers like that, on the road in double overtime was devastating.”

The season didn’t unfold the way Hague wanted it to, with Sage Hill playing host to a playoff game. It has been five seasons since that last happened at the school, but Hague and the Lightning at least went down battling.

Tyler Hague

Born: March 3, 1997

Hometown: Newport Beach

Height: 6-foot-2

Weight: 175 pounds

Sport: Basketball

Year: Senior

Coach: Jeff Beeler

Favorite food: Chicken and steak burrito from Chipotle

Favorite movie: Gladiator

Favorite athletic moment: “Hitting the game-winning shot against Crean Lutheran.”

Week in review: Hague led the Lightning to two wins, helping Sage Hill set single-season records for overall wins (18) and Academy League wins (nine).

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