High School Basketball Roundup : University City Jumps Past La Jolla, Has Share of First

Take a football player and a long jumper and throw in an opponent that files its intensity away at halftime, and you have a tie for first place in the City Western League boys’ basketball race.

That’s about the way it happened Tuesday when host University City (13-6, 3-1) came back from a 13-point halftime deficit to clip La Jolla (11-6, 3-1) in overtime, 65-58.

The football player is Darnes Taylor. He’s big, strong and, by his own admission, not at home on the court.

“Everybody knows I’m not a basketball player,” he said. “So I just go out there and try to get everybody fired up.”

Taylor missed most of the first half after taking an elbow to the nose. While he was being attended to in the locker room, University City was foundering on the court. Taylor came back in the second half and scored all eight of his points, giving his team the leadership it needed and providing the means for La Jolla to fall flat on its first league loss.

But the day truly belonged to the long jumper, Jerome Price, who stands at 6-feet 1-inch but plays as if he’s 6-7 or 6-8 because of tremendous vertical leap.

Price missed Friday’s game against USDHS to participate in the Sunkist Invitational Track meet in Los Angeles. He won the high school division with a long jump of 23-6. University City lost to USDHS, 70-60.

A reporter at the meet told Price the bad news.

“(He) told me that we lost, and I was mad,” Price said.

Tuesday, he made up for it. With University City trailing by nine, Price hit two consecutive jump shots in the third quarter to help his team inch closer. Minutes later, he hit a 15-footer from the left side to cut it to 42-40, La Jolla. He then scored seven points in the fourth quarter to send the game into overtime.

In overtime, University City took charge and won easily. Price scored five of University City’s nine overtime points and finished as the game’s leading scorer with 28.

“It’s a whole different world when he’s in there,” University City Coach Tom Medigovich said.

Medigovich thought about that last week when he considered dropping Price from the team for missing the basketball game.

“I was not too thrilled at all,” Medigovich said. “I made the decision that if I kicked him off the team, I was going to do the team harm.”

La Jolla Coach Rick Eveleth questioned his team’s ability to concentrate after taking a lead. Twice while ahead in the final minutes of the game, La Jolla missed the front end of a 1-and-1 to give University City its opportunities.

“I think it was totally a mental letdown,” Eveleth said. “We’ve done it two or three games in a row and today it came back to haunt us.”