Shooting slump dooms Pembroke Pines Charter in 1st trip to boys’ basketball state final
Dallas Graziani leaned to his left and twisted his body backward, trying to do anything he could — maybe even use some telekinesis — to will his eighth three-point attempt of the game to fall through the net. It clanked short of the rim once, then twice. It skipped up to hit the backboard, then bounced down on to the iron again. After an agonizing few seconds, the ball finally rolled off the hoop and tumbled down toward the court. Graziani backpedaled to set up on defense with Pembroke Pines Charter still trailing Tallahassee Rickards by three points with two minutes left in the third quarter.
By the end of the period, Pembroke Pines’ deficit swelled a bit to six points and Graziani, who led all of Florida in scoring last season, didn’t have a single point. The Jaguars had only made two threes. It was getting hard to avoid the inevitability of their 67-60 loss in the Class 5A championship.
“We didn’t shoot the ball well Thursday, nor did we do so today,” coach Dave Roca said. “I haven’t even looked at the numbers, but I know they’re pretty atrocious. If you don’t hit baskets, you don’t win.”
Graziani didn’t score until 1:25 remained and then he nearly fueled a miracle comeback, scoring five points, forcing a turnover and getting Pembroke Pines (26-3) an offensive rebound on a missed free throw when he knocked the ball out of bounds off a much-taller Rickards rebounder. Graziani’s first three cut the Raiders’ lead from 16 to 13 and the Jaguars cut the deficit as close as 64-60 with 14 seconds left before Rickards (21-7) iced the game at the free-throw line.
If the game was a minute longer, Roca was confident his team would have come back to win. Instead, Pembroke Pines fell just short of its ultimate goal in its first ever appearance in the boys’ basketball state championship at the RP Funding Center.
“Nine times out of 10 — that’s they’re one time,” Roca said. “We can produce and manufacture points, but we weren’t hitting baskets tonight.”
Graziani,finished with just five points, going 2 of 17 from the floor and 1 of 13 from three-point range. The Jaguars shot just 42.6 percent from the field and 13.6 percent on threes. Pembroke Pines, one of the most potent three-shooting teams in South Florida, finished its two games in Lakeland just 4 of 38 from three. Even guard Javen Flowers-Smith, who led the Jaguars with 16 points, went just 1 of 6 on threes.
It was the most unlikely way for Pembroke Pines to fall apart in the final game of the best season in school history.
“Just didn’t hit shots,” Graziani said. “We practiced while we were up here, so I was still getting shots up throughout the days we were up here. They just didn’t fall.”
The Raiders finished at 56.8 percent from the field and went 5 of 10 from deep. In the fourth quarter, Rickards was a perfect 8 for 8 from the field. The majority of the Raiders’ scoring all season long came from guards A’Drelin Robinson, Ke’Varius Taylor and Zackary White, and those three combined to score 52 of Rickards’ 67 points.
The Jaguars entered the fourth quarter trailing 39-33 and scored on its first three possessions of the fourth, and still couldn’t make up any ground. Taylor hit a tough jumper, then Robinson made a floater and Taylor hit back-to-back threes. Pembroke Pines’ deficit was suddenly double digits and too big for a final push to overcome.
“They were able to make big buckets at specific times during the game,” Roca said, “that I thought kept them at a healthy distance from us really making a run.”
This story was originally published March 7, 2020 at 5:24 PM.
