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Photo by Jake Fray/The Advocate
Sophomore forward Jeremy Jones gets blocked by Walla Walla guard DJ Wright in the fourth-place game Tuesday.
Saints NWAACC title hopes dashed, slide to 7th
The Advocate
Despite high hopes of bringing an NWAACC trophy back to Gresham, the Saints men’s basketball team finished in seventh place in the 16-team tournament in Kennewick, Wash.
“I was real disappointed,” said sophomore Jeremy Jones, reflecting on his team’s performance in the tournament. “It wasn’t a big deal for us finishing one spot a head of what we did last season. We came here to win a trophy.”
Trophies were awarded to the top four teams in the tournament.
“It was my last game in this jersey,” Jones said. “We definitely had the talent to win it all. Just goes to show that you can’t have any off days or bad games in a tournament like this.”
For the second year in a row, the Clackamas Cougars out of the Southern Region won the title, defeating the Western Region’s Lower Columbia Red Devils 72-49 in the championship game.
The tournament’s MVP, Portland State-bound Cheheles Tapscott, destroyed the Red Devils with 26 points on 11 of 17 shooting from the field and grabbed 21 rebounds.
As for MHCC, the Saints took down the Big Bend Vikings 83-75 in the first round with four players in double figures for the Saints. In round two, the Saints offense froze and the team shot a season-low 25 percent and lost to the Tacoma Titans. In round three, the Saints came back with a vengeance and defeated the Green River Gators 70-56. In the fourth-place contest on Tuesday, the Saints were taken down by the three-point shooting of the Walla Walla Warriors (17 of 38) and were without point guard Earl Jones and Jamar Johnson and Chris Williams for the first half due to team violations from the evening before. In addition, Earl Jones declined to play in the second half of the Walla Walla game.
“It’s tough,” said Gibor. I didn’t want to finish my first year like this. I thought we were the best team in that bracket. We should have come home in at least fourth place.”
* * * * *
In addition to coming home in seventh place, the Saints had trouble off the court the night before their final game against the Warriors.
All-stars Earl Jones and Jamar Johnson, the team’s two highest scorers (16.4 and 14.6 points per game) along with bench player Chris Williams (4.9 ppg), were suspended by Gibor for the first half of the Warriors game for violation of team rules. Gibor did not go into further detail in discussing the issue.
“They made some poor choices,” said Gibor in a sign of disbelief and loss of words. “I think that I was exceptionally fair in my decision to only bench them for one half. I didn’t want the rest of the team to suffer due to a few people’s bad decisions.
. . . . .
Saturday vs. Big Bend Vikings — The Saints came away with an 83-75 victory over the Vikings. Leading all scorers was Garrett Strasburg who finished with 23 points. Jamar Johnson added 19 points and Chris Weizel chipped in nine points and eight rebounds.
All-star Dominick Brumfield led the way for the Vikings with 22 points and 15 rebounds. The Saints held their other all-star, Jeff Ranstrom, to five points.
As a team the Saints shot a season-best 56 percent from the field.
* * * * *
Sunday vs. Tacoma Titans — Things didn’t look good from the start for the Saints in their 20-point loss to the Titans 64-44.
As Gibor put it, the team “couldn’t shoot a ball into the ocean.” They walked away with their heads hung low and their field goal percentage was a season’s worse 25 percent.
Earl Jones led the Saints with nine points on four of 17 shooting from the field.
Three Vikings scored in double figures — Jordan Coby with 14 points, Chris Holmes with 13 and Anthony Enriquez with 11 — in the blowout.
With the loss, the Saints were sent to the consolation round in the losers bracket and could finish no better than fourth place.
* * * * *
Monday vs. Green River Gators —- The Saints bounced back with a 14-point beating of the Gators, 70-56, in a do-or-die game that sent the Gators home.
Earl Jones played his best game of the tournament, leading all scorers with 19 points on 60 percent shooting from the field (6 of 10). Jeremy Jones added 16 points and Dustin Jones finished with 11 points and led the team’s highlight reel with his slam-dunk in the second half.
As a team, the Saints shot 38 percent from the field (19 of 50) and 42 percent from behind the arc (6 of 14). The Gators shot 31 percent for the game (19 of 60) and only 11.7 percent from the three-point line (2 of 17).
* * * * *
Tuesday vs. Walla Walla Warriors — In the final game of the season and with a chance to take fourth place in the tournament, the Saints decided that ego was more important than a trophy.
Earl Jones wasn’t crossing over defenders, making acrobatic passes nor was he scoring at all against the Warriors. In fact, the sophomore point guard never touched the court.
“This all hurt me really deeply,” said Gibor. “I couldn’t have seen this coming.”
After being benched for disciplinary reasons for the first half, Jones was given the chance to come back in the game but declined to playing in the second half while his team was trailing 29-25.
“He had the opportunity to start in the second half,” Gibor said. “He said he didn’t want to play. He has to live with that for the rest of his life.”
But Gibor expressed that life goes on. “I don’t hold grudges with people,” the coach said. “No matter what, I will always be there for him. He did help win 42 games in two years with our program.”
Jones, in an interview Tuesday night after the game, expressed regret when asked why he declined playing in his final game as a Saint.
“I don’t know what I was doing,” he said without going into detail about what went down the night before.
Looking back on the situation, the point guard said he knew that he let his team down.
“That was my bad,” said Jones. “I got upset that I wasn’t able to start in my final game as a sophomore. I made a terrible decision in not playing with my team in the second half. I know I let my team down. I did it all out of anger and frustration.”
Gibor said, “Earl owes his team a huge apology and the coaches as well. That would be a good step in the right direction. If he would have played, we could have easily won this game.”
The Warriors Head Coach Jeff Reinland sympathized with Gibor and his players. He admitted that with Earl Jones in the game, it would have been a completely different outcome. But he was happy with his team’s performance and fourth-place finish.
“The game was offset by Earl not playing,” said Reinland. “It would have been much closer with Earl in the game. Guys did a good job filling in for him. But with that said, they are not the dynamic athletes that Earl is.
“At the same time, we were without one of our best players, if not our best player — Ben Searle — who is out with concussion problems.”
In 11 games this season, Searle averaged 17.2 points per game, including 22-points on Dec. 5. against the Saints.
Leading all scorers was Warriors DJ Wright. who sank seven three-pointers on eight attempts, ending the contest with 21 points, 10 rebounds and six blocked shots in 37 minutes of playing time.
Throughout the season Wright only averaged 7.2 points per game.
“He’s done all of our dirty work for us and has basically been our fourth or fifth option all season long,” said Reinland on Wright’s performance. “DJ Wright was hot for us when the rest our team was cold.”
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