D-II basketball roundup
Few upsets among top boys, girls teams
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WIESBADEN, Germany – No. 1 AFNORTH and No. 2 Naples played like the top-seeded teams they are on Day 1 of the DODDS-Europe Division II boys’ basketball tournament.
The problem for No. 3 Baumholder, however, was that No. 13 Ansbach played much better than its seeding.
“You gotta keep playing,” said Baumholder’s Tahrell Harris after his Bucs edged Ansbach 39-37 in their opening pool-play game of this four-day event after trailing for most of the second and third periods.
Hamstrung by Ansbach’s press for much of the game, Baumholder unleashed some full-court pressure of its own in the final stanza. The Bucs forced turnovers which led to two Ben McDaniels buckets in the game’s final 2:10. The first put Baumholder, which hadn’t led since there were 38 seconds left in the first period, ahead 33-32. The second, which followed a Harris bucket, put the Bucs up 37-34 with 1:36 to play.
But it took Baumholder’s other Harris, Dimio, to put the game away. After Ansbach’s Derrick Flake, who led his team with 12 points, tied the game with a nothing-but-net three-ball with 59 seconds to play, Harris, who finished with 13 points, put back a missed shot for what would prove to be the final margin with 14.9 seconds to go. Ansbach brought the ball up court, but Dimio Harris knocked the ball away from Ansbach’s Xavier Jones, who scored 10 points, on a drive to the hoop as the horn sounded.
“It does,” Tahrell Harris answered when asked whether it helped have such a tough game the first time out. “Coach says you have to play everybody hard.”
If Harris is correct, No. 1 AFNORTH and No. 2 Naples derived less benefit than they might have in romps over No. 15 Marymount International School of Rome and No. 12 SHAPE, respectively.
Behind 19 points from Jake Schmidt, whose inside presence dominated the proceedings, AFNORTH romped to a 50-15 victory.
Schmidt hit 9-of-11 free throws against Marymount, but the Lions had more trouble in their second game against 10th-seeded Bitburg, trailing 25-23 at halftime before prevailing 62-47 behind the second-half scoring of Schmidt, who chalked up all 15 of his points after intermission. Westin McKinney led the team with 16 points.
Naples made short work of SHAPE, going up 61-22 on a D.J. Stockman bucket with 1:04 left in the third quarter that invoked DODDS-Europe’s 39-point courtesy rule. The remainder of the game went off under a running clock with no official scoring recorded after that point.
Nigel Alexander led Naples with 23 points and nine rebounds in less than 15 minutes or so of playing time.
No. 7 Hohenfels, the defending D-II champion, pulled off Wednesday’s upset of the day by claiming a 44-41 victory over No. 4 Aviano, but the perennially strong Saints and all the other Day 1 losers will play on.
Wednesday’s results were to fill a single-elimination bracket in Division II that will be used for the remaining three days of the tournament.
There were no surprises in the early going among the D-II girls, where the top seeds, SHAPE, Naples and AFNORTH, prevailed by 20, 30 and 42 points, respectively in their opening games.
The other two divisions are straight pool-play events, with the pool winners and runners-up playing each other in Friday’s semifinals. There were no D-I games scheduled for Wednesday – that tournament begins at 8 a.m. Thursday, with the D-I boys playing at Wiesbaden High School and the girls at McCully Barracks in nearby Wackernheim.
