Reliable winning style has Belen boys one win from state basketball final four
It looks like the rats are at it again.
Three years after a group of small, undersized Hispanic kids shocked their opponents (and a whole bunch of other folks) by rolling to a first-ever state championship by playing their frantic “rat race” style of basketball, Belen Jesuit is making another run at a title.
In a terrific basketball game between two evenly-matched teams that featured a total of 10 lead changes, the host Wolverines, using their now-patented frenetic, high-pressure style that drives opponents crazy, edged Plantation 65-60 in a Region 4-5A semifinal on Saturday night.
Belen (24-5) advances to the Region 4-5A final next Saturday (Feb. 28) where the No. 2 seeded Wolverines will face a big challenge traveling to Pembroke Pines to take on top-seeded Pines Charter at 7 p.m. The game will be a rematch of last year’s regional semifinal that Pines Charter hosted and ended Belen’s season with a close 50-46 win.
With their noisy and rabid fan base packed into the Belen gym including their student section, nicknamed “The Ultras,” Belen players fed off the energy and spent every second from the opening tip to the final tick of the clock relentlessly pressuring and harassing the Colonels into a total of 24 turnovers.
“We’re not very tall and at the end of the day, we call it our rat race,” said junior Orlando Roche, who led all Belen scorers with 19 points including a clutch three-pointer from the corner with 1:33 left that gave his team a four point lead. “A lot of teams have the horses to go up and down but can they go side to side the way we do? Most of the time they can’t. We’re used to this. We play like this all season and love the tempo.”
But Plantation, a resurrected program under third-year coach Jermaine Gammage, which just won its first regional playoff game in 22 years last week, and made its first regional semifinal appearance since 2004, didn’t flinch in the face of all the pressure.
Led by senior J.B. Washington who led all scorers on the floor with 30 points, the Colonels dealt out some pressure of their own forcing Belen into 11 first half turnovers.
Trailing 22-16 early in the second quarter, Plantation (21-7) tore off a 17-4 run to go up 33-26 less than a minute before halftime.
But when Roche buried a three-pointer from the corner five seconds before halftime, it started what would turn out to be Belen’s own 17-4 run putting the Wolverines back up 43-37 midway through the third.
Back came the Colonels who chopped away to forge a 50-50 tie after three quarters. After Belen scored the first six points of the fourth, Plantation was at it again, going on an 8-0 run (six of the eight points from Washington) to take a 58-56 lead with 3:30 left. Roche’s clutch three-pointer with 1:33 left made it 62-58 Belen before Plantation’s Aiden Simon hit a running layup and drew a foul with 55 seconds left.
He missed the free throw, but eventually Plantation got the ball back after a missed shot by Roche with 30 seconds left. Down by two, Gammage called timeout with 11 seconds left to set up a play and it was Washington who drove the ball into the center of the lane for a driving layup.
Even though he didn’t draw an offensive foul, Belen’s Lucas Baldor managed to establish position in front of the basket that threw Washington off as he tried to avoid the charge, which caused him to bounce the running layup off the front of the rim. The Wolverines got the rebound and Plantation, which was trying to qualify for only its second-ever regional final with the only appearance coming in 1975, fouled with five seconds left. Roche then hit a pair of free throws to ice it.
“You just adjust with what you’ve got and I’ve been lucky enough to have kids listen to my crazy rear end to do some of this rat race stuff,” said Belen coach Chachi Rodriguez, who moved into rarified air three years ago when he became the only coach in state history to win state championships with three different teams - Belen, Coral Reef (2009) and Hialeah Champagnat (2000). “We just try to play as fast as possible and defend our tails off. We talk about the rat race thing because while everybody has horses, can they go side to side? That’s really our thing. It’s pretty fun to coach it and pretty fun for our guys to play it.”
Asked about the similarities of this team and his championship team three years ago, Rodriguez didn’t say a thing. He pointed to senior guard Alec Arnholt and said “ask him, he should know.”
Arnholt, who finished right behind Roche with 17 points along with six assists and five rebounds, was a freshman on that team and the only current Belen player on the roster who was on the court that day.
“I felt like it first started with the foundation that our seniors established and I got to see first hand what it took to be a state champion,” Arnholt said. “As a small Cuban team out of Miami, there are not a lot of teams around that can run with us. We go out there and play fast and at the end of the day, that really suffocates a lot of teams and it starts with the confidence that Coach Chachi instills in us. Yes, we’re just like that team three years ago and feel like we can do this again.”
MORE RESULTS
Region 4-1A - Dade Christian 74, West Palm Beach Atlantic Christian 59: Gabriel Alonso led the Warriors (27-2) with 25 points. Nikola Mirkovic had 13 points, eight assists and five rebounds. Te’Mar Thomas also had 10 points to go along with seven rebounds and six assists. Michael Herrera and Benjamin Jamison also had 13 points each. Dade Christian will next travel to Weston to play three-time reigning state champion Sagemont next Saturday at 7.
Region 4-7A: Columbus 68, Western 63; Coral Glades 71, Palmetto 64
Region 4-6A: St. Thomas Aquinas 64, Boyd Anderson 37; Miramar 76, South Plantation 60
Region 4-5A: Pembroke Pines Charter 84, Delray Beach Atlantic 45
Region 4-4A: Stranahan 62, Northwestern 48; Riviera Beach Suncoast 53, Mater Lakes 49
Region 3-3A: Calvary Christian 76, West Palm Beach Cardinal Newman 36; Boca Raton St. Andrews 61, North Broward Prep 60
Region 4-3A: Cardinal Gibbons 58, Pine Crest 56; NSU University School 63, SLAM 61
Region 4-2A: Miami Country Day 83, Westminster Academy 76