Merillville Gary Post Tribune

WARSAW -- The sea of red and white had been silent for several minutes.

The Munster faithful, filling one full side of Warsaw's gymnasium, were waiting to erupt.

Waiting, anxiously, to see whether their Mustangs had any magic left over from their record-setting run to the program's first Final Four.

Waiting, nervously, for a late rally, one final push. The Mustangs gave it to them, of course.

Down 13 with just more than four minutes to play Saturday, Munster began battling back. Three consecutive 3-pointers. Two quick steals. Tons of gritty determination.

"I really felt we were going to come back," senior point guard Krste Ruiz said. "Maybe one more basket, one more stop, I think we would have been there."

The Mustangs' comeback, scrappy as it might have been, fell just short.

And No. 8 Munster's magical season came to an end in a 63-60 loss to No. 6 Fort Wayne Snider in the Class 4A semistate at Warsaw.

"I told the kids I might be as proud or even more proud of this loss than some of our victories," Munster coach Mike Hackett said. "They battled to the last tenth of a second. There was no quit in this team. And that's part of what's made us so good. We didn't necessarily play our best basketball today, but it wasn't from lack of effort, I can tell you that.

"There was not an ounce of quit in those kids."

The Mustangs knew what they were up against Saturday. And Snider, the No. 23 team in the latest USA Today Super 25 rankings, proved to be every bit as good as advertised. Led by Jonathan Sims' game-high 17 points, the Panthers put four players in double figures.

Sims had three of Snider's eight 3-pointers. Carl Miller (14 points) had four 3s.

"We had some missed assignments," Hackett said. "We knew who their shooters were and we didn't pick them up in transition or we rotated off and left them open. Things you can't do when you get to the semistate."

Miller nailed three consecutive 3-pointers, the first of which gave Snider (25-1) a 15-12 lead after one quarter, helping the Panthers take the lead for good early in the second quarter. Munster (24-2), which trailed 29-25 at the half, hung around. But playing from behind made it difficult for the Mustangs to dictate a slower pace against the up-tempo Panthers.

"It forced us to play a little different than what we've been playing," Hackett said. "You¹d like to take your time on offense and get a great shot, but the clock's against you. So we had to start scoring quickly. And they're hard to score quickly against."

But the Mustangs did score quickly when they found themselves down 49-36 with a little more than four minutes to play. Ruiz (team-high 16 points, three assists, two steals) keyed Munster's 11-2 run with a pair of 3-pointers. And Kyle Ritz (10 points, three assists) trimmed Snider's lead to 51-47 on a free throw with 2:09 to play.

But that was as close as the Mustangs got until Ritz nailed a buzzer-beating 3-pointer, typifying Munster's never-say-die mentality.

"Most teams would have (given) up a long time ago," Ruiz said. "We're not that type of team. We didn't come this far to give up within the last two seconds of the game. We told ourselves we¹re going to try our very hardest until that final buzzer went off, and win or lose we left it all out there on the court.

A late technical foul did nothing to aid Munster's comeback bid. With 22.5 seconds remaining, and Munster out of timeouts and trailing 58-51, Brian Stolarz tried to get a delay-of-game warning to stop the clock by grabbing the ball after Ritz made a basket.

"I was very disappointed with that call," Hackett said. "I've seen it called a million times (as) just a delay of game. The referee blows his whistle, tells you to leave the ball alone, and in the meantime we can get our press set up. Well, this guy says your guy grabbed the ball and ran and stood out of bounds with it, and that's a technical. And I'm not so sure it is. It's something I'll have to look up.

"Don't get me wrong, that didn't cost us the game. But it sure as heck didn't help."