SANTA ANA, Calif. — Daniel Hamilton went on the fast break late in the fourth quarter for No. 6 St. John Bosco. He got away with a push off to get in deep for a layup the ball spun off the rim and out.
That just about summed up the night for Hamilton against No. 2 Long Beach Poly in a 60-54 loss on Saturday at the Nike Extravaganza.
Hamilton clearly wasn’t himself. His brother and the team’s leading scorer, Isaac, was out with an undisclosed school matter according to head coach Derrick Taylor. That left Daniel to carry a larger share of the scoring load and he couldn’t find the touch.
“This is the worst I shot all season,” Daniel said. “It was real tough for me out there trying to make plays and I just probably want to blame this one on me, honestly.
“I think I was trying to rush a little bit too much instead of letting the game come to me, I was trying to rush into it.”
He finished with nine points on 4-of-19 shooting.
Hamilton wasn’t the only one who suffered from a poor shooting night. There was enough to go around as neither team shot the ball particularly well from the floor. The Braves actually shot better than the Jackrabbits, 36.5 percent to 36 percent.
The above the rim theatrics were something to see.
Bosco began the game with a lob from Hamilton to sophomore point guard Tyler Dorsey.
Long Beach Poly responded with an alley-oop from Jordan Bell to Roschon Prince on a breakaway to put the Jackrabbits up 5-2 early in the first.
The most interesting throwdown of the night was just that, a throwdown. It came in the fourth quarter on a sideline out of bounds play. Prince threw the ball up towards the rim. Bell went up to get the ball over a St. John Bosco defender but it was slipping out of his hand so he was left with no option but to throw it hard off of the glass on his way down. That gave the Jackrabbits a 42-39 lead.
“Every time I go up, I think I’m going to dunk it,” Bell explained. “I lost grip of it and I was falling back so I just had to throw it down like that.”
Below the rim, however was a different story. Poly mucked the game up to their liking. Taylor said he was concerned with how many points his team would be able to score against the Jackrabbits defense and found out the 54 wouldn’t be enough.
“We was a little choppy on offense because they’re so tough defensively,” Taylor said.
It didn’t help the Braves cause that the older Hamilton was out of the lineup. To add to that, center Devin Burleson left the game with a stinger after playing nearly four minutes.
Dorsey did what he could with 24 points and 12 rebounds but the loss of Isaac was too much to overcome, especially against a team as talented defensively as Poly.
“When you lose a guy who’s averaging 22 points a game and he’s also one of your biggest rebounders and he’s your playmaker, it’s a huge difference,” Taylor said.
