Long Beach Poly edges St. John Bosco on Jordan Bell buzzer-beater

NORWALK, Calif. -- The last-second bucket Jordan Bell scored to give Long Beach Poly (Calif.) a 61-59 victory over St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Calif.) is what the game came down to.

But myriad intricate details went into the bucket that advanced Poly in the California Interscholastic Federation Southern California Regional Open Division Basketball Championships.

A loose ball was batted straight to Bell, right next to the basket all alone, and he easily put it off the glass and into the hoop as the final second ticked off at Cerritos College. Look closer at replays, and it becomes evident it was a series of events that all came together to create a magnificent ending that compelled Poly students to hop the railing and storm their classmate in celebration.

Roschon Prince drove the lane with a right-handed dribble and as the entire Bosco defense converged upon the electric scorer, Prince's wild layup attempt was swatted away by Bosco's Tyler Dorsey as Prince barreled into a Bosco defender who was close to stationary. The ball went directly to Bell, and nobody was there to get in the way of the 6-foot-8 senior who is committed to Oregon.

"I ain't never won a game like that off a buzzer beater. I don’t know what to think," said Bell, still being mobbed by students and adults alike. "(Coach Sharrief Metoyer) said the play was for Roschon but if he missed, he knew I would be in perfect rebounding position. We knew they were gonna double-team him. He missed the layup but I was right there to clean it up like I said I would."

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Bosco coach Derrick Taylor spoke from the deflated Braves locker room after the game and wondered aloud how much more his team could have done on that fateful, fatal, final play.

He certainly wished his players had received some help from the men in black and white stripes.

"We knew they were going to clear for (Prince). We were just going to contain him and bring help," Taylor said. "Our guy did what he was supposed to do: He took a charge. The ref didn’t call a charge. We did everything right. He was waiting for him, he ran him over."

Video of the play shows that Taylor has a case. A can't-deny case? That's debatable.

The Jackrabbits advance, though, and they will head to Mater Dei on Tuesday, finally providing fans a Poly-Mater Dei matchup that never happened in the Southern Section I-AA playoffs. And they have a chance to climb from their current No. 15 spot in the Xcellent 25 National Boys Basketball Rankings.

In what was a nip-and-tuck most of the way, the Braves forcefully swiped the momentum in the third quarter and gave themselves a lead that could have sustained them the rest of the way. But just as fast as Bosco opened up an 11-point advantage behind back-to-back 3-pointers from Isaac Hamilton and Daniel Hamilton, Poly then went screaming on an 18-2 binge.

It was 42-31 Bosco with 4:50 left in the third quarter, then 47-44 Poly at the end of the period.

"When we were down, obviously I didn't want the game to get away from us," said Prince, committed to USC. "Our effort was to get nasty and get physical. We got back in it and took this game over."

Aside from those two spurts, the largest first-half lead was five by Bosco and four by Poly in the fourth quarter.

For Bosco, it was a chance to show that the Braves could beat Poly with a complete roster. In the Nike Extravaganza on Feb. 2, the Braves played without Isaac Hamilton and lost to the Jackrabbits, 60-54. This time around, Isaac Hamilton undoubtedly made a difference, as the UTEP commit scored 22 points on 9-for-14 shooting and added seven rebounds.

The Braves had success in the second and third quarters with a zone defense that let Poly take all the jump shots they wanted. Those shots rarely fell, and a few didn't even touch the rim. But they also mixed it up with man defense, and that helped Poly get back in the game after the Bosco run that got the Braves up by 11.

"We felt we could defend them. We wanted to mix up the defenses and keep them off balance," Taylor said. "It's a tough pill to swallow when you lose a game like that. We did everything right down the stretch to get it to overtime."

The Braves also got 16 points from Dorsey and 11 from Daniel Hamilton, plus seven assists.

Prince was the star all night for Poly, and it was no surprise that he had the ball in his hands for the what Poly thought would be the final shot of the game. He led all scorers with 25 points and added 10 rebounds. Bell added 12 points and 13 rebounds, and got a lot of the credit from Prince, who said he wanted to take the final shot.

"(Coach Mettoyer) asked me if I got it. I said I had it. He said don’t settle for a jump shots. Usually in those situations I settle for 3's so I just wanted to go to the basket with like five seconds left," Prince said. "And my teammate told me he had me and he showed a tremendous amount of effort. He blocked a loft of shots and saved us on defense."