BOYS’ ALL-STAR BASKETBALL GAME : Clark Does His Best, but 2-A Loses to 3-A

Saturday night at Serra High in the county’s All-Star boys’ high school basketball game, players from bigger schools saw what they’d been missing out on all year: the pleasure of guarding Christian’s Tony Clark, who transferred to the smaller school from 2-A Valhalla last year.

Although his 2-A team lost, 101-100, Clark almost single-handedly beat the 3-A team in the closing minutes. He scored the 2-A’s last 10 points, including two three-pointers.

Only misses by 2-A’s Anthony Hill (University City) and Glenn Ankton (El Camino) on the front end of one-and-ones and a layup by 3-A’s Bill Wootton of Mt. Carmel with two seconds left prevented Clark from leading his team to the victory.

Clark scored just six point in the first half but had 16 of his game-high 32 in the fourth quarter. Most came on double-pump jumpers in the lane with people hanging all over him.

“I came out tentative and tried to get everybody else involved in the first half,” said Clark, who will be attending the University of Arizona in the fall. “But I made up my mind in the second half that I was going to play.”

One play Clark didn’t particularly like in the second half was made by Mt. Carmel’s Mike Graves early in the fourth quarter. Clark was driving for an uncontested layup when Graves undercut him as he made the layup.

“In an All-Star game, you have to let that go,” said Clark, who was fouled on the play and made the free throw. “But I guess he had visions of blocking the shot.”

Wootton’s game-winning basket was his only one in the fourth quarter, but he made a bigger contribution in the third, scoring nine of his 17 points.

“I was just hanging around down there waiting for someone to pass it to me,” he said.

It took a length of the court drive by Joe McDowell of Sweetwater, but Wootton finally received his pass two feet from the basket.

While Clark was scoring at will for the 2-A team, Point Loma’s David Dunn wasn’t doing a bad job of matching him for the 3-A. Dunn scored seven of his 15 points in the last six minutes, including a three-pointer that gave his team a 95-93 lead with 3:05 left.