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If you’re ever in Las Vegas, don’t bring Frederick Douglass Academy’s basketball team with you.
Yesterday at Manhattan Center, Douglass took two beatings. The first was on the court, where the Lions lost to MC, 58-43, to fall into a tie for first place in the PSAL Manhattan 1A division.
Then they lost the coin toss that determined the outright champions and the top seed from the division. Since Douglass lost the flip, it will have to face the third place team from Brooklyn 3A. That is bound to be a much more demanding opponent than Manhattan Center’s foe, which will be the fifth-place team from Bronx A.
“I’m glad I let them call it,” MC head coach Charles Jackson said with a laugh after Douglass’ injured senior, Corey Hepburn, called tails as PSAL basketball commissioner Mel Goldstein flipped the coin. “I would have called the same thing.”
But no coin flip would have been necessary if MC (17-3, 9-1 conference) hadn’t avenged its earlier loss at Douglass. The Rams took advantage of an unending string of Douglass (17-6, 9-1) turnovers to win going away.
“We gave the ball up too much,” said Douglass head coach Patrick Mangan. “We’re not an offensive team.”
It showed yesterday, as Mangan employed an unusual offense — actually it was no offense at all — for nearly all of the first five minutes. No dribbling, no passing. Mangan was trying to lure the Rams out of their zone, but to no avail. It actually gave MC more confidence than it already had.
“We thought they were scared when they did that,” said MC’s Omar Malave, who scored a game-high 18 points. “We were dumbfounded. This is our place. They have to bring it to us.”
Douglass eventually did, but it was never able to put much of a dent into the 10-3 lead that MC had built by the end of the first quarter. Despite constantly looking over at Mangan during the first minutes of the game, Jackson said he wasn’t upset by the tactic.
“I go way back. I’ve seen that stuff before,” Jackson said. “I was just giving him a peek to see what he was going to do.”
Regardless of what Mangan did, it was the inability of his players to create anything offensively that cost Douglass.
But it was the play of Malave, who scored 14 of his points in the second half, that propelled MC. That wasn’t something that Jackson thought would be necessary until last week, when starting center Marcel Momplaisir became academically ineligible for the rest of the season.
“I told Omar that he had to step up,” Jackson said. “He’s done that offensively, but we still miss [6-foot-7] Marcel inside altering shots. But we’re getting better.”
And having some luck doesn’t hurt, either.
