Stressful but successful: Gibbons boys’ hoops wins another thriller, secures BCAA title
Cardinal Gibbons coach Bill Mallon can’t say enough about his team’s grit.
The Chiefs lost their starting point guard Casey Etienne to a season-ending injury before even playing their first game.
They went on to lose four of their first six games.
Gibbons has lost only one game since.
And while Mallon has enjoyed every moment of this run of 18 victories in 19 games, he wishes his team’s triumphs would come with a little less stress.
“I don’t know what it is about this team in the first halves of games,” Mallon said. “I’ve tried all different kinds of motivation, but it seems we can’t play our best basketball until we fall behind.”
Gibbons fell behind again Saturday night as it did in all three games this week during the BCAA Big 8 tournament.
But the Chiefs pulled off another thrilling comeback victory as they’ve done repeatedly through their run, this time rallying in the second half to edge South Plantation 58-57 and win their first Big 8 title since 2014. It was the closest margin of victory in BCAA finals history.
The Paladins (22-4) played in their first BCAA final after winning their first two games ever in the tournament earlier this week, beating Cypress Bay and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Samuel Vil, who earned tournament Most Valuable Player honors, and Ryan Grant - both juniors - made the two decisive plays in the final 15 seconds to secure the win after the Chiefs (20-5) trailed by as many as 10 points in the second half.
Trailing by a point with 18.8 seconds left, Gibbons pressured the ball in the backcourt. With Gibbons’ senior Tyler Fox guarding him closely near the sideline, South Plantation’s Dwight Stephens heaved a ball back toward the middle of the court. Grant intercepted it and tapped it toward Vil who was open at the rim and layed in the go-ahead score.
After a timeout by the Paladins (22-4) with 4.9 seconds left, Lathan Coleman took the inbounds pass and dribbled across half court. But as he tried to lob the ball into the paint, Vil deflected the pass which landed in Grant’s hands, who then hugged it allowing time to expire.
“We go through that sequence in practice all the time and we feel like we always have to get that steal,” Grant said. “Our defense turned up the intensity and we got the ‘dub.’”
For Gibbons, all season it has been a collective effort at the offensive end.
Saturday night was no different as none of their players scored in double figures, but five of them scored either eight or nine points. Fox and Marcus Perrier each had a team-high nine points while Vil, Jayden Owens and Caleb Alcineus each had eight.
Kaiden Francis and Jevante Gibson each had 14 points to lead South Plantation.
In the first half, it appeared both teams’ offensive futility was staggering as the teams combined for just 12 first-quarter points and were on pace to break the tournament record for fewest points (70), which was set by Gibbons against Boyd Anderson the only other time it won the Big 8 title.
Francis ignited South Plantation’s offense in the second half as the Paladins opened a 29-19 lead midway through the third quarter.
Fox and Vil hit back to back three-pointers to stem the tide and spark Gibbons’ on that end of the floor.
“It was all about team effort,” Vil said. “We’ve got a lot of heart on this team. We got the job done.”
Gibbons heads into next week’s district playoffs with plenty of momentum as it tries to win its first state title since 2015 and second in its program’s history. The Chiefs entered the week ranked second in the state among Class 4A teams in the FHSAA’s power rankings, but are in a difficult Region 4-4A bracket that includes Mater Lakes, the only South Florida team ranked ahead of them.
“We’re not the most talented team, but we’re the hardest working team and we defend,” Millon said. “We just work. That’s what we do.”
