Cavs hang on after Gay dunks in winner, 71-70 By Pat O'Malley Sun Staff Originally published January 7, 2004 Kenny Hasbrouck and his Cardinal Gibbons teammates were crushed when the buzzer sounded last night at Archbishop Spalding in Severn to end a double-overtime thriller won, 71-70, by the Cavaliers. Hasbrouck missed a two-point jumper from the left that would have given the No. 8 Crusaders (12-3) a huge win over the top-ranked Cavaliers (10-1) with time running out. "I got it off the way I wanted to, but I just didn't make it," said Hasbrouck, who was nursing a hip injury but scored 22 points. "We knew we could beat 'em because they don't have anything we don't have." All three Gibbons losses in the Baltimore Catholic League and Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference have come in the final minutes. The other two were to No. 2 St. Frances and No. 4 Mount St. Joseph. Last night, Spalding's Rudy Gay drove home his fifth dunk of the night with 50 seconds remaining in the second overtime for the margin of victory. Just two days after capping a triple double with 35 points in Sunday's victory over then-No. 1 St. Frances, he was held scoreless through the first quarter for the first time this season, but Gay finished with a game-high 27 points. Gay took a nifty underhanded pass in the paint from point guard Jesse Brooks for the decisive points. "It was a great pass," said Gay of Brooks, who had seven assists. "He throws a lot of them, and you just have to be ready for them. "He just tried to finish the game, and I just helped him." Hasbrouck then tried to finish it off for Gibbons after the Crusaders ran the clock down to the final seconds. In the middle backcourt, Hasbrouck took off for the left as Leon Williams set a pick. His shot was off the rim. "It was a classic, but unfortunately we came up on the short end," said Gibbons coach Bob Flynn, whose team scored the most points against Spalding of any team this season. "We're proud of what we've built here in the last five years. We've proved we can compete with anybody and for the championship this year. We're five minutes away from being undefeated." "He could have beat us," Gay said of Hasbrouck. "They're big inside, and I think they match up better with us than any other team in this league." Hasbrouck, a quick and athletic 6-4 guard with a fine touch, scored all eight Gibbons points in the first overtime and finished with a team-high 22 points and eight rebounds. "It's beyond me that Kenny Hasbrouck hasn't signed Division I with somebody," said Spalding coach Mike Glick. "He's a great player. I'm really proud of our effort the way we turned the ball over in overtime and still kept our heads up to win." Gibbons had the ball at the end of the 59-59 regulation and after the first overtime with the score tied at 67, but couldn't get off the winning shot. Gibbons had an 11-point lead in the first quarter. Williams, Gibbons' 6-foot-8 center, had 20 points and a game-high 10 rebounds. Brett Foelber, a 6-6 forward, had 20 points and eight rebounds. "I don't think we came out unfocused, I just think Gibbons came out on fire," Glick said. "They were getting ready to run us out of our gym. We were very, very fortunate to respond and come back to win." Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun | Get home delivery

By Lem Satterfield and Katherine Dunn Sun Staff Originally published January 7, 2004 Archbishop Spalding's Rudy Gay, an All-Metro forward bound for the University of Connecticut, will be featured in this year's three-day Basketball Academy Tournament, which begins tomorrow at Morgan State University. Also playing in the coed tournament are boys teams No. 4 Walbrook, No. 5 Southern-Baltimore, No. 6 Douglass, No. 9 Lake Clifton, No. 10 Dunbar, No. 14 Randallstown and No. 16 Lansdowne. No. 1 Spalding (10-1), making its first appearance in the event, meets Eleanor Roosevelt of Prince George's County tomorrow night and takes on No. 9 Lake Clifton on Saturday night. Gay had a career-best 35-point performance in a 79-67 rout of then-No. 1 St. Frances Sunday. Georgetown University-bound center Jeff Green, 6 feet 9, leads Northwestern of Prince George's County against Walbrook at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. The girls competition will feature No. 4 Western, No. 5 Woodlawn, Dunbar, Walbrook and Edmondson. In the girls opener at 3:30 p.m. today, Woodlawn meets Walbrook in a rematch of last year's Class 4A North regional quarterfinal. Virginia-bound guard Danesha Kenion leads Oxon Hill of Prince George's County against four-time defending 1A state champ Dunbar at 8 tomorrow night, against Walbrook at 2 p.m. Friday and against Baltimore City champion Western at 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Also Saturday, defending Baltimore County champion Woodlawn meets Dunbar's girls at 3:30 p.m. At 5 p.m., Douglass faces Randallstown. The Rams edged Douglass, 73-70, for last year's 3A North regional final, avenging a loss from 2002 -- a season that ended with Douglass going unbeaten for the state crown. Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun | Get home delivery

Triple double by senior leads No. 5 Cavaliers past No. 1 St. Frances, 79-67 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By Pat O'Malley Sun Staff Originally published January 5, 2004 Rudy Gay brought his 'A' game to Archbishop Spalding's small gym yesterday in Severn and left top-ranked St. Frances reeling. Gay, 6 feet 9, put up a triple double with a career-high 35 points, 12 rebounds and 10 blocked shots to lead No. 5 Spalding over the Panthers, 79-67. He appeared at times to be a one-man show for the Cavaliers (9-1) in the highly anticipated boys basketball showdown. "It was my best game at Spalding [in two years at the school]," Gay said. St. Frances (12-2) started with a box-and-one defense on Gay that proved futile as the University of Connecticut-bound senior scored practically every way imaginable and was 14-for-17 from the field. "When they got up by 15 [29-14] in the first half, we had to get out of it [the box], but it was too late, " said St. Frances coach William Wells, whose team had just won four straight in College Station, Texas, to win the McDonald's All-Star Classic. "We lost the game in the first half. It was won at that point. Rudy is a good player, but I'm disappointed in our offense. We never ran any offensive pattern." St. Frances was 1-for-16 from the field in the second quarter and trailed 33-22 at the half. The Panthers finished 23-for-72 (32 percent) for the game, compared with Spalding's 31-for-59 (53 percent). "We spent an hour and a half yesterday on the box-and-one," Spalding coach Mike Glick said. "But we're more than just Rudy Gay. Our backcourt and bench are very important to us. We're a defensive team before we're an offensive team." Darnell Harris, St. Frances' leading scorer, was held in the first half to two of his 23 total points by Spalding's superb defense, which has given up 60 points only twice this season. Harris had six of his team's nine three-pointers. Spalding made nine of 10 shots from the field in the final eight minutes to prevent the Panthers from getting back into the game. The Cavaliers' Justin Castleberry scored eight of his 15 points in the final quarter, when teammate Marquis Sullivan had four of his 12. "When Rudy is playing like that, it makes the game a lot easier for the whole team," said Spalding point guard Jesse Brooks, who had six points and seven assists. Gay made four three-pointers (three of them in an 11-point first quarter), hit a few pull-up jumpers in the paint and just outside it, drove the lane and dunked four times. Two dunks came with both hands, one was a tomahawk that shook the backboard and one was a reverse two-hander with his knees nearly as high as his head. Did Gay - who won the slam-dunk contest last week at the Beach Ball Classic in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where the Cavaliers went 2-1 - show the standing-room-only crowd all his tricks? "I don't know. I've always got a few surprises," he said, beaming. "We had to come out and let everybody know we are better than them." The Cavaliers improved to 3-0 in the Baltimore Catholic League and 2-0 in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference. St. Frances slipped to 1-1 in both leagues. Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun | Get home delivery

Baltimore Sun Top 20 Boys Basketball Poll as of January 6, 2004 1. ARCHBISHOP SPALDING 9-1 2. St. Frances 11-2 3. Walbrook 5-1 4. Mount St. Joseph 9-1 5. Southern-B 8-0 6. Douglass 5-2 7. Glen Burnie 6-0 8. Cardinal Gibbons 12-2 9. Lake Clifton 5-2 10. Dunbar 4-1 11. Calvert Hall 12-1 12. Towson Catholic 10-3 13. Woodlawn 4-3 14. Randallstown 4-2 15. Westminster 6-0 16. Lansdowne 5-1 17. Atholton 5-0 18. River Hill 6-1 19. Old Mill 7-0 20. Bel Air 7-0 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Washington Post Boy's Basketball Top 20 Poll Published Tuesday, January 6, 2004 1 ARCHBISHOP SPLADING(9-1) Today: Cardinal Gibbons, 7 Last: 2 2 Oxon Hill(6-0) Today: Parkdale (0-7), 7:15 3 3 Springbrook(6-0) Today: Blair (5-3), 7 8 ON THE RISE 4 Potomac (Va.)(10-0) Today: at Forest Park (7-1), 7:30 14 5 Magruder(6-1) Today: at Damascus (4-4), 7 5 6 O'Connell(7-2) Today: McNamara (10-0), 7:30 4 7 Bishop McNamara(10-0) Today: at O'Connell (7-2), 7:30 NR 8 Friendly(5-2) Today: at DuVal (3-5), 7:15 7 9 St. John's(10-2) Today: Gonzaga (7-3), 7:30 11 10 Glen Burnie(6-0) Wed.: Meade (4-2), 7:15 12 11 Hayfield(8-1) Last night: at West Potomac 16 12 Georgetown Prep(8-3) Today: St. Stephen's/St. A. (6-5), 6 6 13 Dunbar(10-2) Today: Ballou (6-2), 7:30 13 14 Montrose Christian(5-4) Today: at T. Roosevelt (4-6), 7:30 1 15 Gonzaga(7-3) Today: at St. John's (10-2), 7:30 9 16 Herndon(8-2) Today: Oakton (6-5), 7:30 10 17 T.C. Williams(9-1) Today: at Chantilly (7-2), 7:45 17 18 Thomas Stone(7-0) Wed.: Lackey (2-6), 6:30 NR 19 Suitland(7-1) Today: at Bowie (5-4), 7:15 NR 20 Paul VI Catholic(9-3) Today: at Bishop Ireton (3-7), 7:30 20 --------------------------------------------- USA Today Boys basketball regional rankings Rankings posted Jan. 6, 2003. East 1. St. Anthony, Jersey City (7-0) 2. Mount Vernon, N.Y. (6-1) 3. St. Raymond, Bronx, N.Y. (6-1) 4. Rice, Manhattan, N.Y. (8-1) 5. Simon Gratz, Philadelphia (7-2) 6. Cardinal Dougherty, Philadelphia (6-2) 7. Archbishop Spalding, Severn, Md. (9-1) 8. Cardozo, Bayside, N.Y. (11-1) 9. Lincoln, Brooklyn, N.Y. (9-3) 10. Trinity, Manchester, N.H. (6-0)

By BOB HOUGH For The Capital Basketball teams will use a box-and-one defense in an attempt to limit the opposing team's main scoring threat, and that's exactly the defense St. Frances came out in to start yesterday's game at top-ranked Archbishop Spalding. The reason for the box-and-one was Spalding's Rudy Gay, and all the Connecticut-bound forward did was drop 35 points on the Panthers in a 79-67 win for the Cavaliers. Gay hit three 3-pointers in the first quarter and finished the day 14-for-17 from the field, as the Cavaliers spotted the Panthers the first four points of the game, but never trailed the rest of the way. "We took a calculated gamble that they would come out in a box-and-one, so we spent an hour and a half (Saturday) working solely on the box-and-one," Spalding coach Mike Glick said. "I talked to Rudy about seeing it, and I thought he and the rest of our team were well-prepared for it." Gay put on quite a show for the packed crowd, adding 12 rebounds and 10 blocked shots for a triple-double. He had an electrifying one-handed slam on a fast-break, went behind his head for a reverse dunk after beating a defender on the baseline, and cleaned up two missed shots with emphatic put backs. His 35 points was a career-high and came just five days after a 26-point, 11-rebound performance in the Cavaliers' win over Dudley (N.C.) in the fifth-place game at the Beach Ball Classic in Myrtle Beach, S.C. "We had to come out and let everybody know we're better than them," Gay said, referring to the fact that St. Frances came in at 12-1 and the No. 1 team in the Baltimore metropolitan area. "I think this was a statement win," Glick said. "Our goal is to win the Baltimore Catholic League/MIAA, and I think this was a challenge to our kids playing the number one team in Baltimore." Gay went 4-for-6 on three-pointers and was 10-for-11 from inside the arc. He had 19 of Spalding's first 29 points and 24 of the it's first 41, as the Cavaliers built the lead to as many as 18 points in the second half. St. Frances would only get as close as 12 points the rest of the way. "Rudy is a special player, and when he gets it going the way he was tonight he's very tough to defend," Glick said. Lost in the shadows of Gay's performance was the defensive play and the guard play of the Cavaliers. Spalding held St. Frances scoreless for the first four minutes of the second quarter, as they turned a three-point lead to a 13-point lead midway through the quarter and took an 11-point lead into halftime. With the Panthers keying on Gay, guards Justin Castleberry (15 points, five assists), Marquis Sullivan (12 points, five rebounds) and Jesse Brooks (six points, nine assists) were able to penetrate for layups or kick-outs to Gay. "We're more than just Rudy Gay. We have an outstanding basketball club, I've very proud of the way our backcourt played," Glick said. There's not much time to enjoy this win, as the Cavaliers will face league foe Cardinal Gibbons tomorrow night. They just returned from the Beach Ball Classic in Myrtle Beach, which included games with nationally-ranked Edgewater (Fla.) and Dudley (N.C.). "I think the traveling gets you ready for games like this. We have not had any easy games this season, but I think with the team we have and the mental makeup of the team, we're up for the challenge," Glick said. St. Frances (12-2) 14 8 15 30 _67 Spalding (9-1) 17 16 21 25 _79St. Frances (67) Alexander 4(2) 0-2 10, Brown 4(1) 3-6 12, Chase 3 2-4 8, Edwards 3 0-0 6, Harris 6(6) 5-5 23, Leeds 1 0-0 2, Yancey 2 2-3 6. TOTALS: 23(9) 12-20 67. Spalding (79) Brooks 2 2-2 6, Castleberry 4 7-8 15, Dixon 3 0-2 6, Galinat 2(1) 0-0 5, Gay 14(4) 3-6 35, Sullivan 6 0-0 12, Angion 0 0-0 0, Bisciotti 0 0-0 0, Cornell 0 0-0 0, Jones 0 0-2 0, John 0 0-2 0, Loughry 0 0-0 0. TOTALS: 31(5) 12-22 79. Published January 05, 2004, The Capital, Annapolis, Md. Copyright © 2004 The Capital, Annapolis, Md.