Coach Tim Reardon strategizes with his team in the decisive final seconds | Jack Sheedy/Prep2Prep |
In certain stretches of the St. Ignatius Wildcats’ 39-38 victory over the Riordan Crusaders (13-8, 6-5) on Friday night, the Wildcats’ star point guard, Trevor Dunbar, seemed to be his team’s only player on the floor.
The talented floor general scored all of St. Ignatius's (17-4, 9-2) 18 second half points, finishing with a game-high 29 points on 9-of-20 shooting. He also was a surefire shooter from the free throw line, making all nine of his free throw attempts. Dunbar outpaced everyone, as the second-highest scorer on his team was forward Julian Marcu with eight.
“I don’t want to win that way,” Wildcat coach Tim Reardon said. “But then again, I like to win.”
Reardon went on to praise Dunbar for his overall play, but more importantly, his commitment to the details.
“In a year, [Dunbar] has gone from being a really good, flashy player, to being a winner," Reardon said. "Making free throws is just one of those factors that turns you into a winner, he’s done it in the big games so far this season.”
In previous games, SI, whose offense tries to not rely specifically on Dunbar to score points, has had to go to him when other players weren’t shooting well. In previous games against Serra, and the Wildcats’ first game against Riordan, Dunbar scored 40 and 26 respectively, the only difference being that SI lost those games.
“The last Riordan game, we didn’t contain Chiefy [Ugbaja] as well as we did tonight, which was big for our team,” Dunbar said. “I want to thank my guys for stepping up defensively. We weren’t getting it done offensively, but defensively we stepped up and contained Chiefy, which was the difference maker tonight.”
In the first half, Ugbaja scored seven points and grabbed seven rebounds. But in the second half, Ugbaja was limited to just two rebounds and was held scoreless.
In the first meeting between these teams on Jan. 17, Ugbaja scored 14 points in the third quarter, which was a key to the Riordan victory. Limiting Chiefy was a priority for SI.
“That was our whole game plan,” Reardon said. “There were only two guys that we were really worried about, and that was Chiefy and Jiday [Ugbaja].”
Jiday, cousin of Chiefy, and the other key cog of this Riordan two-headed offense, was the focal point of his team’s game plan down the stretch. Jiday Ugbaja (nine points, 6 assists) made two quick fourth quarter 3-pointers to pull his team in front 35-30, with just 5:13 left in the contest.
On par with the theme of the night, five quick Trevor Dunbar points brought his team back even with the Crusaders with 3:30 to go in the fourth quarter.
Baskets were traded, but the game came down to one final Riordan possession with the Crusaders down two, after a Dunbar floater put the Wildcats ahead with just 20 seconds left.
Jiday Ugbaja ran the clock all the way down, called off a screen from teammate Zach Masoli, and eventually settled for a contested 3-pointer that clanged off the front rim, leaving Riordan down 39-38 with just 2.1 seconds left.
“We wanted [Jiday] to get to the basket,” Riordan coach Rich Buckner said. “We thought he could beat his man off the dribble, and either get something right at the rim or inside the key. It got bogged down, I think one of our guys tried to set a ball screen, which made it kind of tight at the top. He felt he had no room to drive so he took the shot.”
“I saw the screen that Zach [Masoli] was coming up to set, and I didn’t want that,” Jiday Ugbaja said. “It brought [Julian] Marcu up with him, which kind of forced me to shoot it, because there was no place to go.”
Following a St. Ignatius miss on the front end of the one-and-one at the other end, Jiday Ugbaja had 1.2 seconds left to try and make up for the previous 3-point attempt, but his desperation half-court heave wasn’t able to connect and the Wildcats prevailed in their battle for first place in the WCAL.
Buckner knew the talent he was going up against Friday night, and commended Dunbar.
“You tip your hat to the young man,” Buckner said. “He’s the MVP of the league in my book. Not only for this game, but for his whole body of work this year in the league. He’s led his team, he handles the point guard position perfectly, and like you saw there tonight, we tried to double-team him, but he beat our defense."
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