On Senior Night, the Mission Bay Buccaneers (21-3, 9-3) capped off the second best season in school history with a 52-45 division win over Lincoln (8-14, 4-8).
\nThe final Friday night contest of the season was much closer than it should have been, and one coach Dennis Kane wants his team to quickly forget as it enters postseason play.
\n“If we play like that in the playoffs, we\u2019re going to lose in the first round,” Kane said.
\nAlthough they scored in spurts, mostly on the shoulders of standout junior Justin Moore, Mission Bay\u2019s offense wasn\u2019t clicking like the veteran coach expects at that point in the season.
\nThat was evident in their sloppy 21-turnover and four assist performance.
\n“We have four or five sets that we run real well against one another in practice, but can\u2019t seem to run them in the game,” Kane said.
\nIt wasn\u2019t all bad, even if it was ugly at times. Kane\u2019s team erupted after tip-off, jumping to an early 11-4 lead. But Lincoln quickly bounced back with a 10-4 run to pull within one after one.
\nSparked by a 13-0 run\u2014the first 12 scored by Moore \u2014 that stretched seven minutes into the second period, Mission Bay coasted into the half with an 11-point edge.
\nMomentum slowly shifted throughout the second half.
\nFollowing a back-and-forth third quarter, Lincoln senior Micah Porter beat the buzzer with a three-pointer that trimmed the Bucs\u2019 lead to 36-27 and brought the crowd to their feet.
\nAnd that\u2019s when the amped-up Hornets full-court pressure started taking its toll. Moving the ball past half-court was a struggle, and getting anywhere near the basket seemed impossible for a team that made it look easy at times throughout the game.
\n“It wasn\u2019t that it was hard to advance the ball,” Kane said. “We made it hard to advance the ball, we didn\u2019t attack the basket. We were happy just to cross the half-court line.”
\nAfter several animated timeout discussions led by Kane, his squad responded. The Bucs found openings in the visitors\u2019 press, turning transition passing into easy buckets. Towering 6 foot 9 inch tall junior center Armstrong Ojunkwu threw down a monster jam to put the home team up 48-34 with just over three minutes to play.
\nLincoln fired back after a timeout, though. A series of Bucs errors and easy Lincoln buckets put the end result in question for the first time since the opening period. Hornets junior Moli Mojus drilled a three-pointer, silencing the crowd and cutting the lead to four with 1:02 left to play.
\nThe final minute was a back-and-forth calamity of errors by both squads until Mission Bay shut the door. Senior Bucs guard James Burdette went out in style, sinking two free throws to squash the visitors\u2019 comeback hopes.
\n“An ugly win is better than a pretty loss,” Kane joked. “But I\u2019d sure like to play better.”
\nMoore was as advertised, finishing with a game-high 22 points on 8-of-18 shooting. Ojunkwu collected 18 rebounds and added 11 points and four blocks for the Bucs. Mojus led the way for Lincoln with 20. Lady Bucs come up short
\nMission Bay\u2019s Lady Bucs (2-18) fell to Lincoln (11-10). The Bucs controlled the tempo early, jumping out to a 10-3 lead after one. But despite clinging to a 19-18 halftime lead, Lincoln controlled the tempo the rest of the way with a stifling full-court press that gave the Lady Bucs fits.
\nSophomore guard Sammy Zambrano led the way with a 13 point, 10 rebound double-double.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Senior Night, the Mission Bay Buccaneers (21-3, 9-3) capped off the second best season in school history with a 52-45 division win over Lincoln (8-14, 4-8). The final Friday night contest of the season was much closer than it should have been, and one coach Dennis Kane wants his team to quickly forget as […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":259783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Mission Bay survives late Lincoln surge","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}