birmingham finals

SoCal High School & Prep Report

Eagle Rock Tourney: Braves Beat
Grant in Final--(January 2, 1998)

Well, I guess we have to eat some crow. Two days ago, we said "We question whether this [the Birmingham tourney] should truly be called a "tournament", because it does not look like there's any team here which can really challenge Grant and Gilbert Arenas."

Well, we were wrong. This was a tournament, and Grant was challenged.

And beaten.

Birmingham High beat Grant, and did it convincingly, 82-74 to win the Championship of the Birmingham High Tournament.

See, even in LA, the host team just has to win it's own tournament [see the Orange County Tournament results].

But Grant's Gil Arenas (6'-4' Jr. PG/SG/SF/PF) did nothing to shake the view that he may just be the most dominant player in the City Section this year, and actually increased his scoring average from 30+ ppg by scoring 37,

Birmingham Coach Al Bennett had not been a proponent of the 35 second shot clock. His teams were usually, well, sort of on the small side, and not used to big scoring games. You know, 35 or 40 points was a big score. Bennet was a teacher of methodical, deliberate offenses, ("patient" would be an understatement) and had been known to instruct his teams to stall for minutes a a time, in order to get an edge over more athletically talented teams. But Birmingham must now have enough shooters that it doesn't need to resort to the stall; good thing too, because a 35 second stall really is pretty boring.

So don't say that Birmingham can't score big. Last Tuesday they did. 82 points worth. Senior forward Emmanuel Evans scored 28 points and Stanley Fletcher added 25, 17 in the first half. Fletcher took 26 shots from the field. In past years, Birmingham would take that many as a team. "We've got a little bit of a height disadvantage but we're quick," Evans told a reporter. "It doesn't matter as long as we win on the scoreboard."

The Braves first took control late in the first quarter, building a five-point lead, highlighted by a three-point basket by Fletcher. Birmingham was so busy in the first half concentrating on its own scoring that they almost forgot to try to shut Arenas off. In the first half he scored 22 points, and looked like he was on his way to a Ruben Douglas-esq type of game. But in the third quarter, things were different, and Arenas had only two points in the third quarter, before finishing with another 13 in the fourth quarter, for a tally of 37 points in the game.

Birmingham stretched its lead to 21-13 on a three-pointer by Fletcher, but the Lancers took the lead midway through the second quarter when Krishna Evans tipped in a miss by Hans Hoehn. But then Stanley Fletcher scored nine points in the next three minutes as Birmingham led at the half, 40-37.

As the third quarter opened, Arenas went cold, and so did the rest of Grant's offense, and Birmingham's Evans (gets kinda confusing because both teams have an Evans) scored 10 points in the third quarter as Birmingham stretched its lead to 62-51 at the end of the third quarter. Birmingham led by as many as 16 midway through the fourth quarter as Grant continued ice-cold at the start of the fourth, but then Grant started a furious scoring attack to mount a comeback. On the shooting of Mike Yildiz, Krishna Evans and Arenas' 13 fourth quarter points, Grant managed to to cut the lead to only five, 79-74 with only 40 seconds left in the game.

Grant had what looked like might be the next to the last possession, and a chance to get a shot off to bring it to within two, and time for another to go for the tie or the win. But Arenas missed a three point attempt, and when Birmingham recovered the rebound, Grant was forced to foul Adam Kopulsky, who went to the line and sank two free throws with only 19 seconds remaining to put the game on ice. While 19 seconds might be the equivalent of about 2 minutes in the NBA, this wasn't the NBA, and there was no way that Grant could make up 8 points in only 19 seconds.

Game over. Fini.

So Grant has now finished fourth in the 26th Annual Thousand Oaks Tournament, losing to Newbury Park and Dan Bobik. In the next tournament, the Bell-Jeff Tourney, Grant finished third, beating Bell-Jeff by a score of 112-66. Then Grant finished second at the Birmingham Tournament. They're improving.

For Birmingham Stanley Fletcher had five three -pointers. Arenas finished 15 of 30 from the field. Mike Yildiz scored 13 points, including three three-point baskets, and Krishna Evans added 10 points for Grant. Besides Fletcher and Evans, four players scored at least seven points for Birmingham. Point guard Fahim Hassankail scored eight points and Kopulsky, Jerome Riley and Alex Salas each had seven.

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Third Place Game:

Monroe beat Verdugo Hills 53-47 as Ritter scored 21 points. for Verdugo, Budueiro had a team high 17 points. Verdugo Hills fell to 6-7, while Monroe barely improved to 2-8.

Fifth Place Game:

Granada Hills beat LACES by 19 points, 79-60 as Neumann again scored in double figures with 17 points. Others scoring for Granada Hills were Brown with 9, Hurwitz with 8, Pimky with 4, Hogan 5, Neufeld with 2, Gomez with 9, Tarditti with 7, Modeston 6, and Witherill 12. For LACES the high scorers were Kenard with 10, and Santrel with 22.

Seventh Place Game:

Whoa. Stop the presses. We take it all back.

The young ones should actually be in this tournament.

The Birmingham JV's finally won one, beating Sherman Oaks CES 62-58. Michael Johnson had 30 points and 10 rebounds for the Braves, and Adam Khalil added another 16, while Lawrence Lowe scored 26 for the SOCES Knights, who are not doing much better than Birmingham's JV's, with a record on the season of 1-9.