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Gwynn Park rallies to upset Central
Boys’ basketball: Jackets’ coach improves to 15-0 against the Falcons
As another Gwynn Park High School turnover begat another Central point, a dismayed Yellow Jacket fan slumped his shoulders and shook his head.
“Nah, man,” he sighed to his feet. Central had a 10-point lead near the midpoint of the fourth quarter. “I can’t do another Gwynn Park game. I can’t handle them.”
The fan should have realized that coach Mike Glick doesn’t lose to Central, and that he didn’t plan on Tuesday being the end of his 14-0 career record against the Falcons. With a lot of help from Cedric Hines and some tremendous defense from Marquis Holland, Glick improved to 15-0 against Central, edging out a 66-62 victory in Capitol Heights.
“Of the 15 games we’ve won, it’s like they’ve all been single digits,” Glick said. “It’s just … it’s just weird. Somehow we just escape year after year after year.”
Glick, now in his eighth year with the Yellow Jackets, has seen his fair share of Central teams both strong and not so strong. This year’s is widely considered to be one of the best, as Davon Taylor has developed into the top backcourt threat in the county, averaging 24.9 points per game on 47 percent shooting. The coach’s plan: make somebody aside from Taylor beat them, and he had just the guy to implement it.
Holland, a 5-foot-10, 165-pound senior averaging barely three points per game, doesn’t exactly leap off the stat sheet, but he was the core to Central’s undoing. With his teammates sitting in a zone, Holland played Taylor in man, face guarding the 6-foot-1 senior to deny him the ball. When Taylor did have it, Holland blanketed him and was aided by constant double-teams when needed. The result: Taylor’s lowest offensive output (14 points) on 5-of-15 shooting, his second-worst percentage (33 percent) on the year.
“He’s a tough guard,” said Holland, who finished with five points. “He’s one of the better guards in our league and I did my best — not letting him touch the ball, forcing him left, making him think. They say I play good defense and they kept making me guard him.”
As Holland anchored the defense, Hines assembled his best game to date. He scored a season-high 25 points on an efficient 9-of-14 shooting and buried four straight free throws in the final minute to keep Central at bay.
“They were sagging off of me,” Hines said. “The first half, I wasn’t scoring that much, so they told me to be more aggressive, so that’s what I did. I tried to take it to the hole.”
Meanwhile, center Isaiah Martin continued his recent stretch of scoring, finishing with 14 for his fourth straight game in double-figures.
It was another chapter in a season of close calls for Gwynn Park, which has won one game by four, another in overtime, another by nine, and lost a 50-48 thriller to Frederick Douglass.
“I hope so,” Hines said when asked if the Yellow Jackets would ever be able to enjoy a stress-free game. “But with the way we play, I don’t know. We’re getting good at winning close games. I like games like this.”
tmewhirter@gazette.net
Gwynn Park 66, Central 62
Gwynn Park (8-4, 6-2): 15 15 16 20 — 66
Central (8-3, 5-3): 16 16 12 18 — 62
Gwynn Park: Cedric Hines 25, Isaiah Martin 14, Mike Pegram 12, Evan Joiner 7, Marquis Holland 5, Jayson Johnson 2, Isaiah Miles 1.
Central: Dequan Smith 18, Gary Stewart 15, Davon Taylor 14, Jonathan Brown 8, Derek Moon 3, Andrew Wimbush 2, Kenneth Pettaway 2.
