With the game hanging in the balance, the Westminster senior guard drove to the basket and was fouled with three seconds left in double overtime Friday night at John Burroughs. Williams hit both free throws to break a tie and send the Wildcats on to a 53-49 win in a key game between the last two unbeaten teams in Metro League boys basketball play.

“We dream of these games,” Williams said. “High school atmospheres like this are games we won't forget, for sure.”

Williams scored 30 of his team's 53 points, his third game of at least 30 points this season. The Truman State recruit now sits just 16 points shy of breaking the all-time scoring record at Westminster (12-6 overall, 3-0 league), the No. 9 team in the STLhighschoolsports.com small-schools rankings.

“Kobi's a great high school player,” Wildcats coach Dale Ribble said. “He's had a great career here at Westminster and he will break the all-time leading scoring record at our school for boys basketball. But more importantly, he's a great teammate and he's humble. He makes other players better around him.”

Both teams had chances to win the game before it got to a second OT period.

With the game tied 38-38, fifth-ranked Burroughs (13-6, 2-1) held the ball for the final 90 seconds of regulation, but missed three short-range chances at the game-winning basket in the final seven seconds.

With the teams tied 45-45 near the end of the first OT period, Williams had a chance to win it just ahead of the buzzer, but his free-throw line jumper fell short.

A Ramzi Salem jumper 29 seconds into the second OT period gave the Bombers a two-point lead. With the lead at one, JD Robertson was fouled shooting a 3-pointer and coolly knocked down all three free throws.

Robertson would later sink two more freebies after Williams' go-ahead throws with two seconds left following a long Burroughs inbounds pass that went out of bounds. Robertson finished with 11 points.

“He made five in a row and that says a lot because he missed the front end of a one-and-one earlier (in the first overtime) and then he stepped up and knocked those five in,” Ribble said. “At the same time, JD has put a lot of time and effort into his game and really put a lot of time into shooting the basketball.”

Trevor Reed, who led Burroughs with 14 points, dropped in a pair of free throws with 23 seconds left to tie the game 49-49 and set the stage for Williams' strong drive to the hoop in which he was fouled to lead to the game-winning free throws.

“My first mindset is always to drive and try to make the lay-up or at least get fouled because I've been working on my free throws a lot,” Williams said. “Last year, I was around 73 percent and I wanted to improve that to around 80, 90 percent this year, and I've greatly improved on it.”

The first quarter was a slow one offensively for both teams, but especially Burroughs.

Williams drained a 3-point basket 1 minute, 24 seconds into the game and he also scored the next bucket — almost three minutes later — as Westminster grabbed a 10-2 lead after the first eight minutes.

“I thought we did some of the things we were trying to do defensively,” Ribble said. “They're hard to guard because they're big and strong and they've got some skilled players on the perimeter. We did some things according to the plan and we were fortunate they missed some shots there in the first quarter.”

Burroughs had more fouls (two) than baskets (one) in the first quarter. The Bombers' lone field goal of the first period came on a Sheek Pearson lay-up with just 1:38 to go.

“We were extremely happy,” Williams said. “We doubled down on all the bigs they have. Sometimes we fouled, but that comes with part of the game. I feel like as a team we did a great job of collectively defending the inside.”

The teams settled in offensively in the second quarter.

After a Colby Alpert trey put the Wildcats up by 11, Burroughs closed the period on a 13-6 run to close to within 19-15 at halftime.

Westminster stretched lead back out to six points just over two minutes into the second quarter, but the Bombers answered with a 10-2 run to close out the quarter as they grabbed their first lead of the night on Tristan Reed's putback that made it 29-27 heading to the fourth quarter.

The Bombers led by as many as five points early in the final period, but five straight Wildcats points led to a 33-33 tie. Owen Walther canned a big trey to put Burroughs up by three, but Williams answered with a conventional three-point play to square things again at 36-36 with 3:24 left.

Williams drove to the hoop for a layup to put the Wildcats ahead with 2:24 to play, but Trevor Reed's jumper with 2:03 left represented the final points of regulation and the game headed to a wild pair of overtime periods before Westminster prevailed with a huge win to remain the Metro League's only unbeaten squad.

“I thought it was very competitive throughout the game and it really could have went either way at the end of regulation, at the end of the first overtime and even in the second,” Ribble said. “We were fortunate to win. The execution was good at times and we did enough to win.”