No. 1 Cleveland Gets Better of Granada Hills in Overtime

So, who’s No. 1?

Nobody seemed to care.

“It was a real good game,” Granada Hills High basketball Coach Bob Johnson said with a grin. “I really liked it. I had fun.”

Hmmm, wonder how Johnson would have reacted if his team had won .

Cleveland’s starting guards accounted for 49 points and the Cavaliers shot nearly 80% from the free-throw line to swipe an oh-so-close, 89-86 overtime victory in a North Valley League game at Cleveland on Wednesday.

A game that featured The Times’ No. 1- and No. 3-ranked teams in the region was as closely contested as the rankings would indicate. The teams were tied at halftime, the end of the third quarter and the end of regulation.

Clutch play was the order of the day. Yet an inability to clutch the ball might have done in the Highlanders, who before last week’s upset to Taft were ranked No. 1.

A follow shot by Adrian Sellers (16 points) gave Granada Hills an 85-83 lead with 1 minute 10 seconds left in overtime, but Cleveland point guard Kenny Collins answered by making a 10-foot jump shot. As the Highlanders spread the floor in a stall set, Collins swiped the ball from Jerry Allen’s blind side and cruised in for a layup to give Cleveland a two-point lead with 23 seconds left.

“I’d been watching him the whole game,” said Collins, who finished with 24 points. “Whenever he turned around, he put the ball in his opposite hand. I anticipated it and went for the steal.”

Granada Hills guard Jevon Lee (15 points) was fouled by Collins with 15 seconds left and made the front end of a one-and-one opportunity. Lee missed the second attempt and the ball was rebounded by Allen, who scored a game-high 27 points. But Allen missed amid a forest of Cleveland arms inside.

Sellers pulled down the rebound and threw up a follow shot that clanged off the right side of the rim. He rebounded his own miss and offered a pump fake in traffic but was called for traveling with eight seconds left, accounting for the Highlanders’ 29th turnover.

Collins was fouled and made two free throws with five seconds left--he made seven of eight from the line--to give the two-time defending league champions a three-point lead. Sagy Koren threw up a running 25-foot shot with two seconds left, but the three-point attempt missed the entire backboard.

Off-guard Carlos Vasquez added 25 points for Cleveland (15-5, 6-0 in league play), including 15 in the second half.

Granada Hills (15-4, 4-2) played the entire game in a man-to-man defense with junior swingman Brandon Martin as the prime target. Martin scored 18 points, eight below his season average, marking just the third time this season he has been held to less than 20. However, Martin was 10 of 10 from the free-throw line to lead the Cavaliers, who made 27 of 34 (79.4%) and nine of 11 after the third quarter.

Cleveland blew a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter. Murray’s reverse slam dunk gave the Cavaliers a 71-62 lead with 4:32 left in regulation, but the Highlanders rallied with a 10-2 run.

After Martin made both ends of a one-and-one to give Cleveland a 77-74 lead with 23 seconds left in regulation, Gene Barshtak scored inside, was fouled, and completed the three-point play to tie the score with 16 seconds left.

Collins, shooting too early with 10 seconds left, made an 18-foot jump shot. Allen was fouled in a loose-ball scramble at mid-court and, despite the yelps of a partisan Cleveland crowd, made both ends of a one-and-one opportunity with four seconds left to send the game into overtime.