SoCalHoops High School News

Nike Dream Classic: Crenshaw Downs
Compton In Wild Finish--(Jan 18, 1999)

No time for pictures on this one. We'll post them up later. We gotta get out of here; 14 hours of basketball is plenty. But for now, the final game of the evening:  Compton v. Crenshaw. Not quite another track race, but a battle of good shooters (at least in the first half), great athletes, and two of the best point guards in the region squaring off as tito Maddox and E.J. Harris duked it out for top honors.   The first 6:30 it was all Compton, but then E.J and Tommy Johnson just smoked the Tarbabes. Trailing 21-9 with 1:20 to play in the first period, Crenshaw went on a 9-0 run and closed out the first half trailing only by 3. And the best thing about this one was that both schools brought their full complement of cheerleaders and the bands, and now we know why in college basketball games at Pauley they only have one band:  The acoustics in this barn aren't great, but when you have two inner city teams banging away, with 6,000 people in the stands going nuts, it's pretty deafening.

The second quarter started off witha little cat and mouse, and neither team was able to do much offensively.  Compton hit a basket by   Hosendove, but then Dwayne Parker came right back.  Jonathan Stokes got one of the biggest blocks which allowed Crenshaw to close to within one as he fed to E.J. for the fast-break layup but Compton came right back with an Ellis Myles twisting layup off a misdirection pass from Leroy Dawson and after getting the foul shot as well, Compton still led by 3, 25-22.  Tommy Johnson hit two  from the line to make it a one point game, 25-25 with 4:14 to play in the first half.  Both teams traded shots at the line, and only Compton was able to hit one of six taken, and with 3:30 to play, the score was still 26-25 in what was shaping up as a great defensive battle. At the half the score was 34-31, and it was anyone's game.

Somewhere in the third, we're not sure quite where, Crenshaw just turned on the juice and Compton went into a funk, because with 1:27 to play in the third, Crenshaw had managed not only to close the three-point gap at the half, but also had scored another 9 to bring the score to 51-42.  In the fourth it was more of the same, except that we were completely distracted by Dave "Rockfish" Benezra's commentary ("They can't keep switching between American rules and Australian rules. . .you can't call traveling. . .) but not enough to miss what was otherwise an otherwise phenomenal race as the lead switcdhed hands at least four times in the last two minutes.   Compton led 60-62, then Crenshaw came back and led 64-63. In the last 49 seconds of the game, there was a small fight, a bench clearing where both sets of coaching staffs tried to keep the players apart, and then the refs paused the action while they sorted the mess out.  In the final analysis, Bobby King, Demetrius Clark and Jamaal Barnes were ejected for leaving the bench; for Crenshaw, Shaun Hemsley, Webber Dampier, and Osa Daramola were also ejected.

So what happens? 

With the score 63-64, Leroy Dawson shoots two and gives Compton the lead on the foul shots 65-64. With 32 seconds on the clock Stokes hits a huge three to give the Shaw the lead by two 67-65, and Compton calls timeout with 25 seconds to play. But everyone in the house is convinced that the refs messed up by letting Dawson shoot the foul shots like a technical, but then gave the possession Crenshaw, virtually denying Compton the final shot.  Even though Compton got the possession back, the refs should have called the deadball foul, made the ejections and had the players line up at the line. 

But that's woulda, shoulda, coulda.  And Compton didn't get that luxury this time around. Final score: Crenshaw 67, Compton 65.

Stokes and Maddox finished with 24, Tommy Johnson had 14, Dawson 12, Myles 10, Parker had 10. We'll have complete boxes later.

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