Bulldogs denied in own house

Holiday tournament a success, despite home team’s loss

Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2005

For the eighth straight year, the Bullis boys basketball team failed to capture its own Bullis Holiday Classic, but for Bulldogs coach Bruce Kelley, the whole tournament experience is worth much more than just wins and losses.

That’s why Kelley was able to live with his team’s fifth-place finish, including Sunday’s 55-53 win over a much taller and deeper Notre Dame Academy (Va.) squad.

‘‘Do you want to set it up to be a high-profile tournament that college coaches come in and some of your players might get recruited from the tournament?” Kelley said. ‘‘It happened last year with Dominique Davis. Coaches from Howard were there. That means bringing in good teams, and our kids work so hard in the off-season, lifting weights and playing ball. They want to go against the better players. If it means we don’t win, we don’t win it. When we do — not if, when we do — it will mean that much more.”

Bullis (3-2) was denied an attempt to build on last year’s fourth-place finish when it dropped an 85-82 double-overtime decision to Southern Maryland Christian Friday night. Southern Maryland eventually reached the final, where it lost to Towson Catholic.

The Bulldogs rebounded to crush the SEED School, 85-41, Saturday behind a balanced offensive attack and then slipped past a Notre Dame team that features five players who stand 6-foot-6 or taller, including 6-8 senior center Pat Behan (7 points, 7 rebounds) and 6-7 senior forward Richard Flemming (21 points, 6 rebounds, 2 blocks).

That pair helped stake the Dragons (6-6) to a 31-28 halftime lead, but an 18-9 third quarter turned the momentum toward Bullis, which got scoring from five different players in the quarter, including five points from freshman Elijah Gore.

Notre Dame got no closer than two points the rest of the way through a combination of the Bullis defense, missed free throws by the Dragons and two clutch foul shots by senior center Sam Sentz, who scored a team-high 20 points.

All-tournament selection Jeremy Myers kept Bullis in the game early, scoring 10 of his 14 points in the first half, mostly on dribble drives on set plays.

‘‘We like tough games, building ourselves up, getting ready for the [league] season,” said Myers, who averaged 16.3 points per game for the tournament. ‘‘They outsized us. They had a lot of numbers. They went deep, but we were able to pull it out.”

Avalon learns tough lessons

Avalon’s first trip to the Bullis Holiday Classic in its first varsity season proved to be a rough but educational affair.

The Black Knights (5-4) were routed, 76-37, by eventual champion Towson Catholic Friday and 77-43 by Notre Dame Saturday before rebounding for a 51-35 win over SEED (3-6) Sunday for seventh place.

Sophomore shooting guard Paul Llewellyn and junior forward David Diakite, an all-tournament selection, paced Avalon with 18 and 13 points, respectively, in the win over SEED. Diakite averaged 13.6 points per game for the tournament.

‘‘Today, we battled through playing at 10 in the morning and after two losses where we played hard but against talented teams,” Avalon coach Matt Morin said. ‘‘I think it was good for us. We’ll find out what we need to build up and to compete. We competed in certain spurts. We need to put everything together. This is a very valuable tournament for us.”

Barrie’s Mitchell in a giving mood

Reflecting back on his team’s performance at the recent Bishop Ireton (Va.) Tournament, Barrie coach Jack Mitchell decided to pull his Mustangs out of the Bullis Holiday Classic and made arrangements for the Kamit Institute of Magnificent Achievement (KIMA) Charter School to take his team’s place.

Mitchell’s squad lost, 71-41, to Ireton and 69-41 to Friendship Edison (D.C.), while KIMA took Ireton to the wire before falling in the tournament final.

‘‘When I thought about that tournament on Sunday and Monday [of last week], I didn’t feel very comfortable with our output,” Mitchell said. ‘‘My kids are kind of disappointed that this was taken away from them, but not everything can be given to you. I’m interested to watch them respond, if they step up to it or not compete. There are a lot of lessons that came out of this weekend. I hated to back out, but I felt good putting a team like KIMA [into the tournament].”

KIMA responded with a 71-61 win over Notre Dame to open the tournament before falling to Towson Catholic and Spalding to finish fourth. Mitchell was told by the KIMA coaching staff that three college coaches approached them about their players.

Barrie enters this weekend’s Pallotti Tournament with a 4-3 record.