Championship Ours

My son's CYO basketball team played for the league championship Sunday afternoon.  This is a fun group that loves basketball and is very motivated.

The core of the team is a group of 8th graders who lost in the finals last season.  As we moved up from the 6th & 7th grade league to the 8th & 9th grade league, we picked up a couple of new players.  This season the guys won 8 of 11 regular season games to take 3rd place of 18 teams.  In this year's playoffs they needed to win 3 straight to get back to the finals.  They played well in the first round to beat a competitive Bulls team by 6 points.  Then in the quarterfinals, after falling behind early, they won against a very talented and physically big team of 9th graders from Framingham.  And in the Friday night semifinals they faced a Lakers team that had beaten them by 22 points earlier in the season.  Though the guys started off well in the semifinals they found themselves down by 11 in the second half.  Things seemed to be slipping away.  But they never doubted themselves.  They rallied together.  Somehow they found the strength to overcome the deficit and win. 

In the Saturday afternoon championship game, they faced the Suns, who'd won six straight and were playing with great confidence.  Before the game, the Marian guys were more pumped than I've seen them before any game in the last two seasons.  They came out flying.  They were pushing the ball up court, passing, and rebounding.  Midway through the first half they were up by 12 points and playing extremely well.  But the Suns weren't going to let the game get away from them so easily.  They used outside shooting to get back into the game.  At the half, Marian led 26 -22. 

In the second half Marian stretched the lead to 8, only to see the Suns regain their hot hand from outside.  The Suns hit an amazing 11 3-point shots in the game.  Not only did the Suns shoot their way back into the game, they took a 6 point lead of their own.  In the last 5 minutes the lead changed hands a few times, with Marian dominating inside and the Suns scoring from outside.  With under a minute left, and the game tied at 49, the Suns rebounded a Marian missed foul shot and decided to hold the ball for the last shot.  They'd either win it at the buzzer or miss and send the game into overtime.  But it didn't work out that way.  Marian's super-quick guard stole the ball at half court and sprinted to the basket for an uncontested layup.  That put Marian up by 2 with 10 seconds left and brought the Marian crowd to their feet roaring!  The Suns inbounded at half court with 6 seconds remaining.  Marian's defense forced them into a difficult shot, but the Suns rebounded the miss.  Their tenacious rebounder, who hadn't scored a basket all day, shot quickly in desperation.  The ball left his hand an instant before the buzzer sounded.  It went off the backboard and around the rim, seemed to be falling out of the basket, and then inexplicably dropped through the net, tying the game at 51.  The Suns home crowd went wild!  Overtime.
 

 

 

The Marian guys weren't phased by the improbable turn of events.  They were hungry to win this thing.  They amped up their effort at both ends.  In overtime Marian scored on drives to the basket and put-backs of missed shots.  They clamped down on the Suns outside scorers and aggressively rebounded every missed shot.  Marian brought home the championship 57-51.  Oh what a game!