Whatever else took place in the 31st edition of the boys basketball Manny Leone Memorial Holiday Classic – and a lot did happen over the course of two days – it was the way Friday night’s game between Jamesville-DeWitt and Christian Brothers Academy ended that would long live in the memory of those who were there for it.
Sophomore Payton Shumpert’s steal and lay-up as time ran out in overtime gave the Red Rams a 76-74 victory over the Brothers, this after J-D had made a huge comeback from a 13-point deficit late in the fourth quarter.
Two seconds were showing on the clock in OT when the Brothers gained possession at mid-court. With most of his teammates covered, Ryan Mackenzie attemped to lob a cross-court pass to the middle.
Shumpert intercepted that pass, and drove in for the lay-up. Whether it consumed exactly two seconds or did not, the clock didn’t run out until after the ball went through the net and Shumpert mobbed by J-D students who spilled onto the court to celebrate.
That it was Shumpert making this decisive play was more than poetic. He had gone to CBA the year before and then, in the summer, transferred to J-D, leading to chants of “Traitor” from CBA students late in the game and adding more heat to a neighborhood rivalry that was already quite intense.
Even more hurtful to the Brothers was the fact that it had a great chance to turn around its 1-4 start and had squandered. Already up 27-24 at halftime, CBA appeared to seize full control when it outscored the Rams 26-13 in the third quarter.
With less than four minutes left in regulation, J-D still trailed 58-45, but applying pressure on one end while converting baskets on the other, the Rams put together 14 unanswered points, many of them by Takuya LaClair, who finished with 18 points overall.
Now trailing 64-62, CBA needed Sean Miller to hit a basket in the waning seconds of regulation to get the game into OT, where it went back and forth and threatened to go longer until Shumpert’s big play.
Overall, Shumpert had 16 points, just behind LaClair and Marcus Johnson, who paced the Rams with 24 points. Max Schulman added 10 points as, for CBA, Aaron Clendenin put up 19 points, with Avion Othman getting 16 points and SirVocea Dennis 13 points. Miller and McKenzie had nine points apiece and Mike Hakizamano had eight points.
All of this followed an eventful first game of the tournament where Westhill, the defending state Class B champions and no. 1 in the latest state poll, took its first loss of the season, falling 67-60 to Henninger.
The Warriors nearly erased a 51-40 fourth-quarter deficit, pulling within two, 60-58, only to have the Black Knights’ Jaden Graves hit on three big 3-pointers in the last three minutes to thwart the comeback.
Of Graves’ 30 points, 15 of them came in the fourth quarter as Travis Gray added 16 points. Westhill lost despite 26 points from Sean Dadey and 15 points from Zechariah Brown.
So it was Henninger taking on J-D in Saturday night’s championship game, and the Red Rams could not avoid an emotional letdown in the first half, which proved costly in a 91-67 defeat.
All through the first two periods, Henninger’s swarming defensive pressure caused major problems for J-D, and what made it worse was that the Black Knights could not miss from the outside.
By the latter portion of the second quarter, Henninger had eight 3-pointers, five of them by Travis Gray, who was on his way to a 27-point night, and the Rams trailed by an astonishing 47-13 margin.
Eventually, Henninger relaxed, and J-D spent the rest of the game cutting into that massive deficit. Late in the fourth quarter, a scoring surge made it 78-67 with nearly three minutes left, but the Black Knights reinserted its starting five and put up the game’s last 13 points.
Shumpert and Schulman both scored 13 points to lead the Rams as Johnson got 12 points. Matt Cieplicki gained nine points, LaClair seven points and Teleak Robinson six points as Jonah Alston and Kaijah Rodgers (13 points each) helped Gray and Henninger prevail.
Before that, CBA endured yet another painful last-second setback in a 47-46 loss to Westhlil.
Superb defense by the Brothers allowed it to stay in front most of the game and withstand the Warriors’ third-quarter run. Back-to-back baskets by Othman and Malcolm Jackson gave CBA a 46-41 lead late in the game.
From there, though, Westhill shut out the Brothers, and with the score 46-45, the Warriors forced a steal and got a chance to take the lead.
Understandably, CBA focused its defense on Dadey, who had 22 points, But Dadey escaped the double team and passed it to Zechariah Brown, who drove and scored the go-ahead basket with four seconds left.
Still, the Brothers had time for a last shot. Othman drove the length of the court and tried a short jumper at the buzzer – but it clanged off the rim.
