BOYS’ BASKETBALL PLAYOFFS : RBV Gets Overtime Victory

Note to Vista High, which will face crosstown rival Rancho Buena Vista in the second round of the Division I Section playoffs:

Don’t play defense; let them shoot.

That almost worked for No. 4 Bonita Vista (18-9) in Wednesday’s first-round game, but RBV (12-16) started sinking some free throws in overtime and came out ahead, 70-61.

In the three-minute overtime period, James VanderVeur hit four of six free throws and Mike Ross and Abe Ajlouny each made two.

That spelled defeat for Bonita Vista, which, after making up a six-point deficit in the last 2 1/2 minutes of play, felt it was the team of destiny.

“Yes, we did think so,” said forward Gerald Rhoden, who sparked the fourth-quarter comeback with 19 points. He finished with a game-high 33.

“We thought coming in that we could win easily if we played the right defense that we had prepared,” Rhoden said.

But in this first-round game, nerves took control from the outset, and preparation was overtaken by emotion.

That was apparent when after five minutes of play each team showed a 2 on the scoreboard. The lack of offense wasn’t because of an overabundance of defense, either. The first quarter ended with each team committing more turnovers than it had points: Bonita gave the ball away eight times (and scored seven points), RBV gave it up seven times (and scored five points).

“We had our shots,” said RBV Coach John O’Neill. “We just weren’t making them.”

Luckily for the Longhorns, neither was Bonita Vista.

“I don’t know what to say after something like this,” said O’Neill, who came up with something, anyway. “I told (Bonita Vista Coach Jim Conlin) that I didn’t think (the Barons) could have played any worse. And I know we have never played worse. I don’t know if it was first-game jitters, or what, but we should give all the people who paid to get in their money back.”

Not so. While both teams struggled to provide continuity, they made up for it with an overload of drama.

The play that brought the crowd packed elbow-to-elbow in the Bonita Vista gym simultaneously to its feet came with 28 seconds remaining and Bonita Vista trailing by three.

Rhoden had the ball behind the three-point arc and was guarded tightly by two RBV defenders. Nevertheless, he was able to leap above the fray and put up an off-balance shot. During the ball’s arc, a whistle blew and a foul assessed to RBV’s Ajlouny.

The ball continued on its path and hit nothing but net going through.

Bedlam on the Bonita Vista side of the gym, and more of the same after Rhoden gave the Barons their first lead in seven minutes by sinking the free throw to make it 58-57.

It seems Rhoden had two goals--to win the game and prove Metro Conference coaches erred by chosing Chula Vista junior Jerome Green as the league’s most valuable player. Green led the county in scoring, but Rhoden, a senior, is considered a more rounded player.

“This game I was on a mission,” Rhoden said. “I’m still mad about how the player of the year voting went. I had to prove I was the right one, that I could get the job done.”

In that regard, he at least gave the voters something to think about. But Rhoden, too, will have plenty of time to ponder his season because in the end it was the clutch shooting of Evan Osmundson--who sank one of two free throws with 18 seconds left to send the game into overtime, then scored four of his 20 points in the overtime period--that won it for RBV.

Vanderveur was RBV’s next highest scorer with 12. Ajlouny finished with 11.