Lowell beat Mission in overtime last Friday night to win the San Francisco (AAA) high school basketball championship. The game was a contrast of styles: Lowell entered the playoffs as the top seed, thanks to a 28-4 regular season record. Mission came in the #5 seed, with a less impressive 13-11 mark.
The Cardinal’s started four seniors, including guard Jordan Wong and forward Arthur Johnson, two of the league’s best players. Mission had no seniors in its starting line-up.
Lowell’s disciplined offense led to most of its 71 points. The Cardinal’s passed the basketball quickly and often, creating open shots from the outside (Wong hit 6 three-pointers, none of them with a hand in his face) and easy baskets for post players. Mission’s half-court offense was not as good, but did manage 69 points off steals and streaky three-point shooting from guards Harry Howard and Damaree Hampton.
It looked at the beginning that Lowell would blow Mission out of Kezar Pavilion. The Cardinals were up by eleven when Jones, going in for a lay-up from the left hand side of the court, was undercut and came down awkwardly. Jones strained his groin on the fall and badly bruised his shooting hand. Lowell went into halftime up 36-22, but the injury to Jones left it vulnerable to a Mission comeback.
Down 45-35 in the third quarter, Howard and Hampton took over for Mission. The duo scored 21 of Mission’s next 23 points, putting Mission ahead by one with 4:15 left in the game. Lowell got a boost when Johnson limped back into the game. The teams traded baskets the rest of the quarter, keeping the crowd in suspense as to who would win the game. At the end of regulation the score was tied at 61.
In the end, Lowell’s experience and execution were too much for Mission to overcome. The Cardinal’s pulled away with clutch foul shooting and tough defense. Guard Alex Hampton hit a crucial three-pointer to put Lowell ahead by five. Forward Jordan Pusung’s rebounding and free-throw shooting kept the Bears alive, though, giving Howard a chance to win the game with a shot at the buzzer…that missed right and gave Lowell the championship.
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5 comments:
This post is awesome. I really like that you covered local athletic event. It's pretty amazing that there was video from that game...unless you shot it? Also I really appreciate how you put a caption under that picture. Good idea.
Just in case you're interested, here's a link to an article about the Lowell JV girls win.
At first I thought,"Oh no... another sports blog." It is awesome that you are covering local sports. It is different than what everyone else it doing. I information was very in depth. This is great because I'm sure you wouldn't be able to find this information else where. Here is a link that might help you with local sports.
The video that you used was great and really helped give some life to your blog. I'm not a sports expert so I can't really comment on how you are delivering the information to your sports loving readers. I would say that it would be nice if you left some links for those of us who do not know what being top seed in sports is, but as I came to find out there are not any that I could find that would do this. So I leave you with the site about Naxareth crowns six AAA champions.
I like the local coverage. I think that its blog posts like that are going to save local media. But I don't like reading sports because many times I am out of the loop so I can't just pick up where the sports writers start.
I would imagine that even sports people might get lost when you just cover the highshool champisonships.
As a reader I would be intrested in some background. Are these two schools traditional the best. Is there a long standing rival. How many teams are there in the city do they only play other schools in the city or is it a bay area thing?
I like the video.
you might be intrested in a small newspaper in lawrance kansas. They will do sports coverage of all local sports down to little league. Every kid in the town gets there own webpage. It really gets serious when they move to high school sports. There is commentary on almost everygame. Even players can have commentary. I think that this is a great model for how newspapers should cover local news.
I do College Sports Report or CSR for the school and we have highlights for that game. But you already have highlights. however you should check out our myspace page.
csr
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