mayfair beats mount zion for championship

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SoCalHoops Tournament News

Rim Rattler Holiday Hoops Invitational:
Mayfair Defeats Mt. Zion For Title--(Dec. 21, 2000)

	What	Rim Rattler Holiday Hoops Invitational
	Where:	Cal State Long Beach Pyramid & Gold Mine
	When	December 18-21, 2000
	Who	20 Top Teams; 10 National & 10 SoCal

childress1.jpg (10937 bytes) On a day when No. 3 Stanford knocked off No. 1 Duke at the Pete Newell Challenge, and No. 2 ranked Mater Dei didn't beat No. 1 Oak Hill at the Las Vegas Holiday Prep Classic, Stanford-bound Josh Childress (6'-7" Sr. G/F) of Mayfair got the good news that his Cardinal own, but he had to wait until his Monsoons knocked off Mt. Zion in the Championship game at the Rim Rattler Holiday Hoops Invitational tonight to hear about it. . . and his only reaction when we told him the score of the Stanford-Duke game after the Monsoons beat Mt. Zion was "For real? Yeah. . .yeah. . ." Childress and teammate Edwin Draughan (6'-6' Sr. F/G) both were very impressive, as was Matt McCraw (6'-2" Jr. G) who knocked down about 4 or 5 three-pointers tonight (we didn't get the full stats, but we'll have them later). For Mt. Zion, the leading scorer was Jarrett Jack (6'-5" Jr. G), a very athletic combo guard who hit a couple of very long threes himself but who also had no trouble driving the lanes and scoring at the basket. At the end of three, Mt. Zion looked like it would take control as they finished the quarter with a 46-41 lead. But the game see-sawed back and forth several times, and Mayfair got only the second lead of the game from the initial 2 points scored by Childress at the tipoff when with 3:43 to play the Monsoons went ahead 53-51 on a long three pointer by This one however came down to the last 40 seconds of regulation. With the scored tied 55-55, Childress was called for an offensive foul, turning the ball over and giving Mt. Zion the chance to run the clock down and take the lead. Jack stood at the top of the key, waiting as the seconds ticked off, and when the clock got to 4.2 seconds, a bit later than anyone thought he should have waited, he launched a three. . . but there was one small problem: The shot was released late, never hit the rim, and resulted in a shot-clock violation. So with 5.8 seconds remaining, Mayfair got possession and a chance to win, but Edwin Draughan missed an opportunity to hit Dante Bradford who was wide open and all alone in the key, and instead he inbounded the ball to Childress who missed the shot. Bzzzz. Overtime.

In the overtime, it was once again a battle between Childress/McCraw and Draughan for Mayfair and Jarrett Jack of Mt. Zion, but with only one of him and three of them, Mayfair pulled off the win in decisive fashion in the final four minutes.

Admittedly the only drawback to this game was that it was not as well attended as we would have thought, but hey, the Rim Rattler folks did a great job with this tournament and they should be congratulated on a really successful event with some great teams, and we hope they will do it again next year.

We'll have the rest of the scores later. In the meantime, here are some photos from tonight's game.