Overseas Elite, Team 23 Advance To Play For $1 Million – Hartford Courant
NEW YORK — Now there are only two teams and one game left in The Basketball Tournament.
Overseas Elite, a group of young players playing basketball overseas boosted by an outstanding collection of lightning-quick guards, spanked arguably the most talented team in the 97-team field, City of Gods, 84-71 to reach the final of the winner-take-all $1 million tournament in the second semifinal Saturday at Rose Hill Gym at Fordham University.
Overseas Elite meets Team 23 for all the dough Sunday at 3 p.m. The game will be televised on ESPN.
Like last year, the inaugural year of the tournament in which 32 teams competed and the prize was $500,000, the runner-up gets nothing.
The money is the ultimate prize, of course, but the players talked about the competition being the big reward so far.
Case in point: Travis Bader, the NCAA career leader in three-pointers made at Oakland University has spent the past two seasons in France and the NBA D-League.
“You have to stay focused; you can’t think of the money. That makes people nervous. You’ll get to the free-throw line and start missing free throws and things like that, and you get tight. You have to take itas another game. It’s a game on ESPN, another opportunity for guys to getexposure, another opportunity to have some fun, and if we win some money out of it, cool.”
Baderwas 1-for-3 from the field but his one three-pointer came with him falling down in the corner.
It also gave Overseas Elite its first lead, 20-18. Former McDonald’s High School All-American Myck Kabongo, who played at Texas, and former St.John’s standout Paris Horne both scored 16 points and ran circles around City Of Gods, which boasted of 10 former NBA draft picks Including Michael Sweetney, the former Georgetown big man and lottery pick who played with the Chicago Bulls.
City of Gods came in as the favorite, but hard work sometimes beats talent and Overseas Elite worked hard, running up, down and through City of Gods. Combine that with the fact they shot 52.9 percent from three-point range (9 of 17) and 56.1 percent from the field overall, it was too much for City of Gods.
“Thats the best we’ve shot in the tournament, and we’re going to have to come out and shoot well [Sunday],” Horne said.
Another guard, Errick McCollum, pumped in 15 points. He, Kabongo and Horne were a combined 5 of 11 from behind the arc.
“This is like the first time we’ve all been together,” said D.J. Kennedy, who had 13 points. “The guards did their thing then the bigs got involved. It was a good team effort.”
Xavier Silas had a game-high 22, Phil Goss added 15 and Pops Mensah-Bonsu had 10 for City of Gods, which trailed by 11 at halftime.
Overseas Elite won’t run around Team 23 like it did City of Gods. It will face outstanding guard play led by Davin White, players with bounce in the paint and a defense that had beaten teams by an average of 24 points through the semis.
“We’re not the deepest and we’re not the biggest,” said Kennedy, who also had six rebounds. “We play hard, we play together and we know the game. A lot of us have played overseas. We like our chances.”
Team 23 87, Ants Alumni 76
Sure, Team 23 was known for its defense coming into the semis, but it’s not bad on offense, either.
It would need both to hold off a scrappy Ants Alumni squad in the first semifinal of The Basketball Tournament because it wasn’t going to win by that many Saturday.
White (24 points) facilitated, controlled the game, shot it well and broke a few ankles on the drive in leading the The Tournament’s West Champions to a decisive 16-point lead at one point in the first half and 10-point lead at the break.
“We got a little lackadaisical at the end of the half and they took advantage of it,” said Travis Gabbidon, who had 21 points for Team 23. “Our defense is the key to what we do and our offense will follow. We just stayed with what we do.”
Ants, a collection of players from the NBA’s 2013-14 D-League champion Fort Wayne Ants led by former Oklahoma State star Stephen Graham, closed up the middle and did what Team 23 did to them in the first half — limit second-chance opportunities. They got back into the game they were getting blown out of early, falling down 10-0 early.
Ants closed to within 50-45 at the 10-minute mark and got as close as three, but Team 23 answered with an 11-1 run and maintained a double-digit lead the rest of the way.
It wasn’t a 24-point win this time, but it was no less an impressive performance for a team that’s playing for one million dollars Sunday.
“We can’t afford to let down like we did because no matter who you play, you’re playing a good team,” White said. “We have to stay focused.”
Copyright © 2015, Hartford Courant
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.