cleveland v. birmingham

SoCal High School & Prep Report

Northwest Valley Conference Game: Cleveland Beats
Birmingham, 73-64--(January 24, 1998)

There were a whole slew of City Section games played on Wednesday. Unfortunately, unless you happened to be at one, you might have missed the news, because inexplicably, the LA Times for the first time in recent memory "forgot" to run the line and box scores on the "aggregate" page, i.e., the page where most other line scores, e.g., NBA, college hoops, bowling, etc. are printed. As a result, we had coaches from all over town calling us for the scores, and we spent at least an hour early in the morning tracking down some of the missing ones. In fact, yesterday afternoon, Friday January 23, we ran into Gary Klein at the LA v. Manual Arts game over at LA High. We kidded him on the greatly "expanded" prep coverage which the Times is touting, and he sheepishly said he had no idea why the Times hadn't run the scores. And he was even surprised to learn that they weren't run in Friday's paper as "late results" either. Oh, well. Gary is doing a great job, and he and Sondheimer are still writing great reports and features. And the Times' prep coverage is improving.

One of the games which the Times did feature on Thursday morning was the Cleveland v. Birmingham Northwest Valley Conference game. In that one, Cleveland won, and Brian Smith (6'-5" Jr. F) just hustled and scrounged for loose balls and rebounds, and it gave him some additional playing time, allowing him to finish with 17 rebounds and 18 points, most of them coming off offensive rebounds. In fact, Cleveland, which is now 12-6 overall and 2-1 in Conference/League play, came back from an eight-point deficit two minutes into the third quarter. Smith later said, "I didn't get a chance to play a whole lot last year. If I want playing time, I have to get rebounds."

Cleveland indeed did rebound, in fact out-rebounding Birmingham 45-26. The fourth quarter featured a 17-3 rebounding lead in the fourth quarter. Smith's brother, Simmagin, finished with 11 rebounds and Rashaad Harper, playing only the second half, had five and all seven of his points in the fourth quarter. Even Al Bennet, Birmingham's coach had to conced that rebounding was the difference in the game.

Cleveland also managed to capitalize on those rebounds, with four putbacks in the fourth quarter alone. Two of them--by Brian Smith and Harper--helped key a 7-0 run that broke a 50-50 tie and gave Cleveland the lead for good. The Cavs also got lucky in the second half, and they weren't called for a foul until there was less than four minutes left in the game, allowing the constant press for rebounds. The Braves mostly used a zone defense--which freed up guard Kent Dennis, a transfer from Bell-Jeff this season, who had been double-teamed in more recent games; Dennis scored 30 points in this game, 12 of them the third quarter, including four three-pointers, and eight assists.

After trailing early, the Birmingham Braves played well in the second quarter, managing to slow the pace, often stalling 15 or more seconds before setting up a play. Al Bennet has always been a fan of the stall and the spread-court offense, sometimes going for many minutes without letting his team shoot. But all that has changed now with the institution of the shot clock. Nevertheless, Bennet managed to slow the game, usually ending a set up by getting the ball to Alex Salas or Emmanuel Evans; Salas scored nine of his 21 points and Evans eight of his 16 in the second quarter. The Braves went on a 12-0 run midway through the quarter to take a 28-24 lead before the Cavaliers rallied with a basket and a three-pointer by Dennis. From there on out though it was all Cleveland. In the third quarter, Cleveland outscored the Braves 21-10, and in the fourth outscored them 23-19.