Clear Lake Falconhoops

Pasadena Tournament Day 1, Game 2 vs. Smiley Golden Eagles Eagles are supposed to be bigger than Falcons. Falcons are supposed to be faster than Eagles. Tonight, neither of those was true. For the seventh straight year in a row, Smiley has a very good basketball team. The Golden Eagles are picked to win their district (19-4A) this year. In fact they are one of the better 4A schools in the state. They are ranked second in the region among the 4A schools by the Houston Chronicle and tonight in the Pasadena Memorial Gym they showed why. With the precision of Marine marching band they orchestrated a first quarter dissection of the Clear Lake Falcons that Denton Cooley would have been proud of. With their team speed and quickness combined with their all-district big man, 6’6” Lezhon Gill (average 25 ppg., 9 rebs., ranked in the top 25 in the region), they put on a clinic for the perplexed Falcons. In the first quarter the Eagles played flawless basketball. They were like machines. Always at the right spot at the right time, no turnovers. Geez. It was 19 to 5 in favor of the Eagles before the Falcons knew what was happening. Of course, 1 of 7 shooting from the Falcons in two point range in the first quarter did not help matters. With the score at 22-7 the Falcons decided to get in the game. A three pointer by Kendrell Thompson and then another by Brandon Wynn brought the quarter to a close with a score of 22-13. In the second quarter, increased defensive pressure by the Falcons began to cause the Eagles some minor concern so we knew they were human. The Falcons pulled to a 5 point difference when the score reached 22-17, then Smiley ran off 9 unanswered points to bring the score to 31-17 before Mark Murphy put in a left handed layup to stop the nonsense. Then another finesse lay-in by Kendrell Thompson helped. With 42 seconds remaining in the half, the persistent Falcons battled back to a 5 point deficit. After a steal and a free throw by the Eagles, Lake in-bounded the ball with 4.95 seconds on the clock but the timekeeper failed to start the clock. Lake made one pass down the court to Gordon Abner, who launched it from downtown and sank it. Since the time keeper never started the clock, the officials disallowed the shot and the half was ended with the score 32-26 in favor of the Eagles. Before the game began, one seasoned fan who types slowly but who shall remain nameless remarked that these officials were too inexperienced to call a game of this caliber between two excellent ball clubs and the officials would be out of their league. These words proved to be prophetic as the officials made numerous bad calls to the point that it was laughable at times. The second half was very poorly officiated. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. The third quarter seesawed with the point difference bouncing from 6 to 8 to 10 to 8 point lead. With less than three minutes remaining in the third, the clock stopped, and with Mark Murphy in-bounding the ball, the official called a 5 second penalty, the quickest in the west, and the ball was awarded to the Smiley Eagles. A review of the tape shows a three second lapse between the time the official handed Mark the ball and when the whistle was blown. Bt this point the officiating was just generally consistently lousy. The quarter ended at 54-44. Still in the hunt. In the 4th quarter, Smiley pulled ahead by 15 at times, played their slow down game to use the clock, and waited for the easy buckets. They maintained their lead at around 12 points throughout the latter stages of the quarter. Lake hit only 6 of 13 free throws and tried to play catch up but they never gave up. They hung in, reduced the lead to 8 points before the final score of 76-65. Thirteen missed free throws, lost by 9. This is the kind of game that makes Clear Lake a better basketball team. Superb competition, Learn from your mistakes, know which skills to sharpen, vow to do better. Scoring for the Falcons: Kendrell Thompson 17, Gordon Abner 10, Armie Lewis 10, Mark Murphy 9, Lee Mazurek 8, Brandon Wynn 8, Justin Kurtz 2, Jordan Villarreal 1. Shooting stats: 2’s: 15 of 30 (50%) ouch! 3’s 4 of 16 (25%) double ouch! Free throws: 23 of 36!!