The Milton boy’s basketball team took on Fla. powerhouse Winter Park at Centennial High School Friday night, in the 3rd Annual Hoops In Overdrive event. Milton (11-2) beat Winter Park (10-3) 75-60 in a game featuring several of the top players in the country.
Milton High School has six players on its roster – senior shooting guard Dai-Jon Parker (6’3″), senior power forward Julian Royal (6’8″), senior point guard Shannon Scott (6’2″), senior power forward Jordan Loyd (6’2″), junior guard Shaquille Johnson (6’4″) and junior swingman Evan Nolte (6’7″) – that have already been offered scholarships by Division I schools.
Parker, Royal and Scott are all on the ESPNU Top 100 list of high school basketball players in the country, while Johnson and Nolte made the ESPNU Class of 2012 list.
Winter Park, on the other hand, has only one player on ESPNU’s Top 100 list, the number one player. Senior shooting guard Austin Rivers (6’4″) is considered the best high school prospect in the country by many scouting organizations, and has already committed to Duke University.
Both teams began the night working the passing game and trying to either get good perimeter looks, or open up lanes to the rim. Neither team fielded a true post player, but Milton seemed to be more comfortable going inside early on.
Royal proved to be more that Winter Park’s center Michael Merlano (6’9″) could handle. Winter Park looked a little confused at first and let Milton build a 23-15 lead by the end of the first quarter.
“[We] came out way too slow,” said Rivers of the first half, “I really think we lost tonight because of our first half intensity.” Winter Park rallied a bit in the first two quarters, getting to within six of Milton, but by half time Milton led 37-25.
In the third quarter Winter Park made it interesting when they went on an 11-0 run with Rivers scoring all 11 points. At one point he made three 3-pointers in a row, two of which would have been good from the NBA three-point line.
Towards the end of the quarter Winter Park had cut the lead to 50-46, however a buzzer beating 3-pointer by Julian Royal ended the Wildcat’s run.
Winter Park kept it close for a little while in the fourth, mostly due to Rivers’, but with their starting point guard, senior Brett Comer, out with the flu, the Wildcats could not overcome Milton’s size advantage.
Coach David Bailey of Winter Park said, “The game plan was to force them into being jump shooters, then look to attack on the offensive end of things. We did the opposite of that in the first half. We allowed them to shoot the shots but forgot to put our hands up…and we struggled to make jump shots on our end instead of looking to attack.”
Indeed, Milton seemed to be executing Winter Park’s own game plan against them in the first half. Milton seemed comfortable getting open perimeter shots and attacking the rim too.
Then on the defensive end they harassed Winter Park’s shooters into taking bad shots that were often contested, and did not allow them to penetrate into the paint at all.
The Eagles keyed in on Rivers specifically, “We just wanted him to earn every point,” said Eagles Coach David Boyd, “He’s such a great player you can’t stop him, and if you run a point on him they’ve got other players who can score, so we just tried to make him earn everything.”
Rivers finished with a game high 31 points. The most points any other Wildcat could muster was eight.
Rivers was exciting to watch, though he often took chances and it showed in his five turnovers. Milton spread the ball around a little better.
Royal led the team with 19 points, Parker had 18, Nolte finished with 13 and Loyd added 15. The two teams met Dec. 21st in the City of Palms Classic, with Milton winning that contest 63-62.
Loading ...
