Xavier Prep’s basketball team had what it thought was a somewhat comfortable 10-point lead over Laveen Cesar Chavez midway through the second half of Sunday night’s (June 27) Blue Bracket championship game in the annual Thunderbird Summer League at Thunderbird High in north Phoenix.
Not too much
longer and the Gators could wrap up the title and finish unbeaten in nine
games.
But they
kept hearing footsteps, faint at first but getting louder and louder.
The
Champions caught the Gators with 3:42 left and passed them shortly thereafter.
Soon, it would be over and Cesar Chavez would be crowned the bracket winner
with Xavier finishing as the disappointed runner-up with an 8-1 record, 58-51.
It wasn’t
the way that the Gators wanted to wind up, especially since they had defeated
Cesar Chavez 52-46 in summer league play on June 8.
Xavier had
played short-handed, missing six players for various reasons, but still managed
to defeat Phoenix Sunnyslope 44-31 in a semifinal earlier in the afternoon on
Sunday.
Four hours
later, by the time for tipoff had arrived for the Cesar Chavez game, the Xavier
roster had been built back up, although the team still was missing three key backcourt
players.
One key
player, sophomore-to-be Sarah Miller, had missed a game on Thursday (June 24)
but returned for the Sunnyslope game.
She was her
usual omnipresent self on the floor, scoring a team-leading 15 points against
Sunnyslope and a team-high 17 against Cesar Chavez. The setback to Cesar Chavez
also lessened the impact of a great-shooting day for incoming junior
forward-post Gabi Trbovic, who scored 14 against Sunnyslope and 16 against
Cesar Chavez. Her shots were magnetic, particularly along the baseline.
For the most
part, the Gators seemed to have enough firepower on offense, but where they
were lacking was on defense, according to assistant coach Rikki
Mulloy-Trombley, who was filling in for head coach Jennifer Gillom.
“Our defense
was more of a problem,’’ said Mulloy-Trombley, a graduate of XCP who went on to
play at Cornell (Iowa). “We are a young team and it showed.
“We were
reaching too much and were missing things on the “help side.’ Getting this
corrected will only come with time.
“This whole
tournament, in terms of game experience and the exposure to things that goes
with it, was good for us. We are looking for more improvement as we get back in the gym when
school starts.’’
The Gators
should get some gym time during a basketball class during the later hours of
the school day, then have official practices begin in October that will lead to
the start-up of the regular season in November.