Post Gazette Column on Zips Hoops Recruit

[Captain Kangaroo]

High School Views: For Beaver Falls, Jeter was Mr. ClutchTuesday, March 28, 2006By Colin DunlapThe clock was winding down, the final few seconds were all that was left in the brilliant career of Beaver Falls senior guard Lance Jeter.For Jeter is a sort of paradox. He's nimble but bullishly strong. He's a great kid off the floor, but the kind of ferocious competitor on it that makes a person cringe at times. In fact, he finished his high school career as the 13th all-time leading scorer with 2,243 points.But most of all, he is unselfish, although when he needs to be, when his team calls for it, Jeter can be as selfish as a little bratty kid who hordes all the candy at Halloween.Against Quaker Valley in the PIAA Class AA semifinal last Wednesday, we saw all sides of Lance Jeter.And the constant that has been the calling card of this splendid young athlete shone through again.For it was Jeter who had the ball in his hands at the end of the game with the score knotted.It was Jeter -- the kid who has caused almost as much depression in Aliquippa as the closing of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation mills -- who seemingly has a homing device wherein the ball gravitates to him in waning moments of big games.But even I thought, sitting there on press row, that it was all coming to an end this time. Surely he couldn't do it again. Surely he's lived his nine lives and there was no way, no freaking way, he could do it again.As Jeter grabbed the ball, 90 feet from victory with the score tied at 70 with just under 10 seconds remaining, even I doubted him this time.I remember turning to the guy on my right and saying, "No way Jeter does it again."Just as the words finished leaving my lips, the echo of that whistle echoed through the building. Jeter was fouled; he would go to the line with 3.2 seconds left.As he launched the first one and it rimmed out, many in the gym -- particularly those Quaker Valley partisans -- had to be hoping for the second one to miss in much the same fashion.But anyone who has had even a passing interest in WPIAL basketball over the last few years knew this one was going to be true. Jeter doesn't come up short in big games, Jeter doesn't miss with the contest on the line.He could have airballed that first one and you just knew the second one was going to find the twine. This was Lance Jeter. He always comes through!Sure enough, the second attempt was pure and it was pure Jeter. It was the game-winner, the bail-out points for a team that, frankly, probably still shouldn't have even be playing.So often we look at size, we look at 40-yard dash times, we look at how much a kid can bench press .Those aren't the telling numbers .Time and again, Lance Jeter has proven that, no matter what happens throughout the course of a basketball game, it truly is what a player does at the end that makes the indelible mark.It is what he does, when faced with adversity and is asked to carry his team that is the litmus test for what kind of athlete he truly is.Unfortunately for him and Beaver Falls, a similar scenario didn't develop in the PIAA Class AA championship game Saturday against Philadelphia Prep Charter. Despite a heroic first-half effort in which Jeter scored 18 points and staked the Tigers to a 29-27 halftime lead, he couldn't prevent the inevitable.Using its superior size and athletic ability, Prep Charter routed Beaver Falls in the second half, outscoring Jeter and Company, 55-22, to win going away, 82-51. Prep Charter held Jeter to just five second-half points.But that doesn't matter. To me, Lance Jeter is, undeniably and unequivocally the greatest late-game player in WPIAL history.