Generals get the job done against Gardena

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Well that wasn’t the slow game I expected -- unless by ‘slow,’ Washington plays in fourth gear instead of fifth.

No matter, Washington (22-4, 10-2) put away visiting Gardena, 61-47, to grab a share of the Marine League championship with the Panthers (19-7, 10-2). A coin flip Saturday will determine the first and second place teams for the City Championship Division playoff seedings.

Even if the Generals too often seemed in too much of a hurry to get shots off against the Panthers’ (19-7, 10-2) variety of zone defenses in the first half, they became more patient as the game progressed.

Washington Coach Andy Davis has been trying to get his troops to play better half-court basketball. It is a style, Davis said, he expects to see more of in the playoffs. Just as important, it is a style of play that Washington can win with in the playoffs.

The Generals seem to understand that in the second half Friday, when the ran set plays instead of just sprinting down the floor and heaving up the first open shot. They were able to turn a 27-19 halftime lead into a 50-31 spread early in the fourth quarter. Gardena, stuck in a run-and-gun mode, grew more and more frustrated.

‘The set offense really helped us,’ Davis said. ‘When we have [center] Lavon McCoy in, we seem to be pretty solid if we decide to play half court. We started the season playing uptemp, but we didn’t have McCoy then. Now we have to include him in the mix. And we do better when we slow it down, if he’s in the game.’

The 6-foot-5, 280-pound McCoy, an offensive and defensive lineman who didn’t join the basketball team until after the football season, had a team-high nine rebounds off the bench for Washington.

-- Mike Terry

-- Image from www.educationalsynthesis.org