‘A’ for effort not enough as OP boys lose

By BEN TRITTIPOE For the News & Messenger
Published: February 26, 2008

During this breakthrough season for the Osbourn Park boys basketball team, effort has meant everything.

When the Yellow Jackets weren’t shooting well, effort on the defensive end helped create transi-tion baskets. When they were shooting well, effort to execute the offense meant the difference be-tween a small lead and a big one.

Effort once again was not a problem for Osbourn Park Tuesday in its Northwest Region Tour-nament quarterfinal game against visiting William Fleming. But for one of the few times this sea-son, the Yellow Jackets could not overcome a cold shooting night and fell to the Colonels, 52-41, in Manassas.

“We haven’t quit all year, and the effort certainly was there tonight,” Osbourn Park head coach Bob Lake said. “I felt we had a good chance to advance with a win tonight, but we didn’t quite get it done.”

William Fleming, which moved to the Group AAA ranks this season after winning the Virginia Group AA championship last March, improved to 19-5 and will travel Thursday to Mountain View for a semifinal matchup.

Osbourn Park finishes its season at 18-9.

The effort put forth by the Yellow Jackets was evident early as they overcame some understand-able jitters and jumped out to a 12-7 lead by the end of the first quarter. Senior Marcus Brooks (game-high 14 points) hit a pair of three-pointers to get OP on the scoreboard, then he capped the period with an old-fashioned three-point play.

“Marcus shot the ball well early,” Lake said. “But sometimes shooting threes can be fool’s gold. Basketball is won from the inside-out, and we didn’t do as good a job as they did of executing that.”

After that first quarter, OP would hit just 10 of its last 42 shots and finished the night shooting just 26 percent. Meanwhile, William Fleming got warmed up in the second quarter and took control of the game.

After Wynton Ola’ Dehinbo’s layup gave the Yellow Jackets a 14-9 lead with 7:10 left in the sec-ond quarter, Fleming went on an 18-2 run to finish the first half with a 27-16 advantage. Marcus Bratton, Troy Daniels (11 points), Bryan Ashford (12) and Andre Edwards (12) each hit three-pointers in that stretch to spark the Colonels.

“We have confidence in those guys taking those shots, and they hit them in that stretch,” Flem-ing head coach Mickey Hardy said.

OP made a couple of runs at the Colonels in the second half, but the Yellow Jackets could never quite regain the lead. An 8-0 spurt late in the third quarter cut Fleming’s lead to 34-29, but a tip-in at the buzzer by Jamelle Hagins broke the string. Then, another 8-0 run late in the fourth brought the Jackets within 45-41 as Aaron Lee hit a three-pointer with 54 seconds left, but the Colonels scored the last seven points to clinch the victory.

Coming off a season where the Jackets won just three games, Lake obviously was pleased with an 18-win campaign.

“I was absolutely pleased with the year,” he said. “Goals were accomplished, but not finished. Nobody likes losing, but the seniors did everything that was asked of them. We proved we can win here and we have a good group coming back, so this is something to build on.”