Islanders dominate Tri-Metro Showdown

Prologue
Its a 1st place showdown in the Tri-Metro as #1AAA De La Salle visits #6AAA Blake.  Blake pulled the 50-44 upset here last year.  Could the Bears do it again?  Full house on hand.  I skip the Subway at the concession stand but still get in a 20 oz Powerade to support the program.  St. John's looking on.  Net Gain, Pump N Run and Minnesota Heat also in the building to represent the AAU side of things.

Game Time
John Veil just back from injury so he's not in the starting lineup. But he enters after the 1st timeout at 14:28.  This one gets out of hand in a hurry.  James Lawson layup, Reid Travis 3 putbacks, 1 of which was a tip dunk, and a breakaway dunk off of a turnover.  Luke Scott 5 in a row with a 3 included.  Trey Shepherd 2 buckets off of 2 more Bears turnovers.  23-4 De La Salle at the 9:52 mark after a 23-2 run in 7 minutes.  Blake already with 2 timeouts gone trying to stop the bleeding.  JR Bascom starts to pick it up with a 3, a jumper and a pair of free throw.  Kebu Johnson adds an inbounds layup.  Blake within 31-18.  Then Geno Crandall with a pair of layups off turnovers that sandwiches a missed front end by Blake.  Luke Scott on the drive for 2, Crandall with a putback after yet another Bears turnover.  Travis with a steal and hard fouled for 2 free throws and the lead is back to 21.  Luke Scott with the set play flare 3 that dead falls in at the buzzer.  46-26 Islanders at the half.  They come out strong with the 1st 10 of the second half.  Lawson with a couple of layups, Scott with a layup and Travis driving for 2.  56-26 De La Salle with 15:25 left.  Travis with 2 free throws and Jarvis Johnson to Sacar Anim for 3 for the biggest lead of the night, 61-28 with 14 minutes left.  The rest is meaningless.  De La Salle goes on to win 79-54 as Blake does avoid running time.

Post Game
Blake with no answers for the De La Salle pressure as turnovers were an absolute killer.  JR Bascom 15 points.  Kebu Johnson 14 points but struggled against the pressure.  John Veil with 1 3 ball for 3 in the game coming off of the injury.  Blake still 1 game ahead of Minnehaha for 2nd with the head-head tiebreaker with 2 winnable road games at St. Anthony and Brooklyn Center remaining.  Blake falls to 14-6.  A big home game in section 6AAA for the Bears against Richfield on Saturday. 

De La Salle puts up too much defense and converted the turnovers into a truckload of easy points.  16 points directly off of turnovers in the 1st half alone  Reid Travis with 23 points and 9 rebounds.  Luke Scott 15 of his 17 in the 1st half with 3 triples.  DLS 17-1 now with a perfect 9-0 record in the Tri-Metro.  They clinch the top seed in the conference tournament that starts next week.  But in a bit of goofy scheduling, the games will be played at the site of the team that did not host the regular season head to head meeting.  So for example, if Concordia, who plays at DLS on Thursday. happens to be the 8 seed then the Beacons would host De La Salle in the 1st round 1 vs 8 game.  Then they would have to play at 4th seed Breck in the 2nd round if seeds hold.  Then they would get to host Blake (the likely 2 seed) in the championship game.