SoCalHoops High School News

Nike Extravaganza Game 3: LB Poly Needs 3 OT's
To Beat Villa Park--(Feb., 7, 1999)

Game three. Long Beach Poly Jackrabbits vs. the Villa Park Spartans.  Hmm. An intersting matchup.  Division IAA v. Division IA.  Two potential league champions (Villa Park in Century, and Poly in Moore League) going at it.   The Nike Extravaganza up to this point in the day had been pretty much lukewarm, not much to write home about.  But no really anticipated just how exciting this game was going to be.

Villa Park has a thing about close games.  So does Poly. Last week at the SoCal Basketball Classic, Poly took Dominguez right down to the wire, losing only by 4 to the No. 9 team in the country.  And Villa Park took Foothill to a two point cliff before edging out the win, 69-67 on Tuesday.   And Saturday was no different for these two teams as both of them took this one down to the wire, requiring three overtimes before it ended with a Poly win 71-69. So
after 32 minutes of regulation play and three 4-minute overtimes, the Jackrabbits pulled it out as junior point guard Wesley Stokes scored a team-high 23 points,

Poly is now 18-6,  and has virtually locked up a Moore League title with their win on Friday night over a decimated Compton Tarbabe team which has now lost 6 players to grade ineligibility, including star point guard Tito Maddox,  really didn't seem to be playing very hard or focused most of the game, something that also happened last Saturday as they only scored 4 points against Dominguez in the first half.   Even though Stokes managed 23 points and 7 assists, he also had 8 turnovers, and the team had a total of 23 turnovers in what was plainly not one of their best performances of the year.    Joe Travis did manage to step up for this one in a way we haven't seen him do lately, and he got 17 points and 6 rebounds.  Shea Anderson was also a big factor in the win, with 12 points and 11 rebounds.

Villa Park came out smoking in the first quarter, outscoring Poly 20-15.  But in the second quarter, the Spartans almost did a disappearing act, as the Jackrabbits managed to hold them to just 6 points as Poly tood a 28-26 lead into the locker room at the half.  And if Villa Park shot poorly in the second, it was catching as Poly also had a pretty miserable third quarter, scoring just 8 points.   Of course, it wasn't as miserable as Villa Park's:  the Spartans only scored 5.  And in the fourth, with just three minutes left in the game, Poly had an 8 point lead, which they promptly managed to blow, sending the game into overtime. 

During that last three minute stretch, the Jackrabbits turned the ball over four times, and Justin Haney, who had 22 points for Villa Park, stole the ball and laid it in with just under 50 seconds to play tied the game up to send it to overtime for the first time.  Employing the "Chick Hearn he who scores consecutive baskets in overtime wins" theory, the Spartans jumped out to a quick lead by four points in the first overtime, but just to prove Chick wrong, Wesley Stokes   and Kenny Wright scored back-to-back baskets to send the game into a second overtime, with the score tied at 53.

In the second overtime, Markee White (6'-4" So. SG/SF) managed a three-point play with just 1:10 remaining to give Poly the lead by three, at 58-55, and Shea Anderson scored again but Justin Haney scored with just 8 seconds on the clock to tie the score again at 60-60 to send the game to the third overtime.  Stokes had a chance to score at the buzzer but his one-handed shot missed.

In the opening seconds of the third overtime, Stokes nailed one of his patented "rainbow-arc" three pointers, and Joe Travis had two monster dunks and two from the line, while Villa Park's Haney and Andy Olsen could only manage 4 points.  Overall, Poly went on an 11-4 run to give them a 71-64 lead with under thirty seconds.  while Villa Park did manage to run off another 5 points, it was not enough and the Jackrabbits had the win.

The conventional wisdom is that players who tend to stick together through not only the regular season, but also the "off-season" (man, is there really such a thing any longer?) tend to play better as a team than those who don't.   And that's generally true.  But that's not the same thing as saying that a team which plays together will necessarily have better athletes than one that doesn't play on the same traveling teams. Villa Park proved the point about familiarity, and also showed incredible tenacity and toughness on Saturday, taking Long Beach Poly into triple overtime before finally losing  by two points,71-69. Like a lot of the better teams in SoCal, they tend to play together during the off-season, entering tournmanents as a team.  They play regularly in Pump Shootouts, at the Slam-N-Jam NIT and at the Best of Summer Tournament together, and in general know each other's games pretty well. But both teams Saturday exhibited a very dangerous trait, one that could hurt them in the playoffs, and that's a tendency to wander somewhat during the course of the game, and it shows with Villa Park scoring only 11 points in two consecutive quarters, and with Poly's 8 point third period.

Anyway, this was a fun game, and a really exciting one to see.  Villa Park's scoring had Justin Haney (6'-1" Sr. SG) with 22 points 5 assists and 2 rebounds;  Andy Olsen n (6'-2" Sr. SG) had a team-high 23 ponts and 3 assists; Matt MacGinnis (6'-2" So. PG/SG) had 14 points and 6 asssits and he also had 5 rebounds. Only two other players scored for Villa, Eric Tadeja (6'-4" So. F) who scored 6,  and 8 rebounds, and Adam Keith (6'-3" Sr. F) who had 4 points.   Danny Horan (6'-8" Sr. F/C) didn't play, sitting out with an injury.

For Poly, Stokes had 23 points, 7 rebounds and 4 rebounds to go along with his 8 turnovers;  Anderson had 12 points, Travis 17 and 6 rebounds.   Markee White finished with 9 points and 5 rebounds, while Lonnel Penman had 4, Kenny Wrigth 2, Jonathan Harper 2, Marcus Sargent 2.

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