Prep Tournament of Champions Final : Dominguez Wins on Elliott’s Shot

With 11 seconds left in the game, the score tied and the tournament championship on the line Saturday night, the ball went in to Michael Elliott, who dribbled to the free-throw line and looked for teammate Ronnie Coleman. It was a long look, for Coleman never came to get the ball.

“I looked at the clock, and there were three seconds left,” Elliott, a senior guard, said. “I just threw it up.”

But Elliott’s impromptu shot, a falling-forward 15-footer with a pair of defenders on him, went in to give Dominguez High School of Compton a 48-46 win over Huntington Beach Ocean View and the Tournament of Champions title at Cal Poly Pomona. Not exactly the way Elliott figured it would happen.

“He (Coleman) was supposed to keep coming out, out to the high post so he could turn around and make the shot,” Elliott said. “But it broke down. It was just a lucky shot. Real lucky.”

Not necessarily, said Coleman, the tournament’s most valuable player after scoring 24 points in the final.

“Mike doesn’t miss any of those,” Coleman said. “That’s when he’s at his best.”

Still, it did come in a game when Elliott scored only 6 points and made just 3 of 15 shots from the field.

To even be in that position, Dominguez (9-0) had to be at its disciplined best. The Dons got the ball after Ocean View’s Ricky Butler missed a dunk with three minutes to play. Without taking a shot, the Dons worked the clock down to 11 seconds, at which point they called a timeout to set up the final shot. Ocean View (8-1) did its part, too, by scoring just four points in the fourth quarter.

Basically, after trailing, 46-40, with 5 1/2 minutes left in the game, everything suddenly went right for Dominguez.

“They did a great job to hold the ball that long,” Ocean View Coach Jim Harris said after losing for the first time in 18 games. “They earned it. You feel like you’re in trouble when a team holds the ball that long and does not make any mistakes.”

Aside from the 24 points by Coleman, Dominguez’s next highest scorer was Eric Washington, with 8. Ocean View got 14 from Desi Hazely and 12 each from Butler and Todd Pickard.

Hazely and Butler were named to the all-tournament team, along with Tank Collins of Pomona, Sam Crawford of Westchester and Darrick Martin of Long Beach St. Anthony.