5A boys basketball: Memorial fends off Bishop Kelley's upset bid
BY LARRY LEWIS World Correspondent
Saturday, March 02, 2013
3/02/13 at 6:00 AM
BIXBY - With upset-minded Bishop Kelley starting off on fire, Memorial coach Eric Savage knew his team could be in for a rough night.
But No. 2 Memorial used tight defense for the last three quarters to defeat No. 9 Kelley 57-50 in the Class 5A area championship game Friday night in the winner's bracket of the playoffs at Bixby.
"Danny did a good job of having them play the way they needed to play to give his team the best chance to win, so I knew it was going to be tough," said Savage of Kelley coach Danny Limes.
"They hit four 3's in the first quarter. We knew they had some shooters, and we were helping off a little too much, giving them some open looks. But once we settled down in the second quarter, we made them shoot over the top of us, and we were finally able to get going a little bit offensively."
Memorial (22-5) trailed 17-7 in the first quarter before R.J. Diggs, who came off the bench, got the Chargers on track with two 3-pointers, including one just before the first quarter buzzer, to narrow the margin to 20-15 after the first quarter.
"R.J. Diggs came in and hit two (three-pointers) in the first quarter and gave us a lift," said Savage. "It kind of broke the ice there for us offensively."
Diggs led a balanced scoring attack for Memorial with 14 points, including three 3-pointers. Devin Perez scored all of his 10 points on free throws on just 11 attempts, and Demari Edwards added nine points.
Kelley (17-8) finally relinquished its lead near the end of the second quarter and trailed 27-26 at halftime. But the Comets regained the lead and extended it to 35-31 in the middle of the third quarter.
The Chargers responded with a 12-0 run to take a 43-35 lead early in the fourth quarter. Memorial never led by fewer than six points the rest of the way.
Perez had hit two free throws with 37.3 second left in the third quarter to give Memorial the lead for good at 36-35, then hit three free throws after being fouled attempting a 3-pointer just before the end of the quarter.
Diggs then extended the 39-35 third quarter lead to 42-35 with a 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter.
"We wanted to pull them out of their zone and get them to chase us a little bit, and once we were able to get a little bit of a point spread, we started making them start to gamble, and we were able to get a few easy baskets and pick up some fouls on them," said Savage.
"They had to extend their defense, and our guards did a great job of handing the ball and handling the press once they jumped in that. I thought Demari Edwards did a great job handling the ball and made some big baskets by going to the hole."
Kelley was led by Josh Limes, who scored 17 of his team-high 22 points in second half. Matt Craig added 12 points for the Comets.
Memorial 57, Bishop Kelley 50
| Bishop Kelley |
20 |
6 |
9 |
15 |
- |
50 |
| Memorial |
15 |
12 |
12 |
18 |
- |
57 |
Bishop Kelley: Josh Limes 22, Craig 12, Adams 6, Daniel Smith 4, J.D. Limes 3, Carson 3.
Memorial: Diggs 14, Perez 10, Edwards 9, Murphy 7, Deane 6, Cockrell 4, White 3, Kemp 2, McClellan 2.
Original Print Headline: Memorial fends off Kelley
