Basketball

Basketball

An Extravaganza For Joe

by David Laurence Wilson

Every time I went home there was another message asking how I was doing, dear old friends from decades past who still had my picture hanging on their wall. Being in a hurry I had to be succinct. I wrote back: “Basketball, Basketball, Basketball,” and I didn’t check the spelling.

Downieville was basketball: the squeak of sneakers, hard bounces and the clang of leather meeting metal. Get used to the sound of a dunk. This last weekend, April 25 and 26, it was a choir.

The ball is going up for the first game of the inaugural Joe Marcantonio Memorial Basketball Tournament. This was Waters (Reno) vs. Flex (Chico). Former Downieville High School player Chip Wilson is at the far right.

We didn’t know the players but many of them already knew one another from men’s leagues and other tournaments. Gradually they became familiar by their attitudes and style of play. One team split into two, and they still won - or half of them did. Another team -- one man short -- borrowed players. There were the practiced and the impromptu, star attitudes and team players. A couple teams could have a future as a reality tv show. For real entertainment -- for angst and comedy -- they should have put microphones on the refs.

Team Downieville shares a light moment at half time of the Waters-Flex game. They’ll be up next. Left to right: Paul Jordan, T. J. Rash, Joe Jacobs, Jeff Newfarmer, Steve Loving, Mason Hemphill

Downieville players prepare for their first game of the tourney

Sportsman’s (Reno) Alex Gamboa watches Sunday’s Downieville-All Out contest before playing the winner.

The home team hadn’t been together long enough to think up a clever team name, so “Downieville” suited up for two and three point losses to Reno’s “All Out” and a team from Nevada County. They played the Reno team “Waters” and their score was almost doubled, 56 to 103, the only contest to reach 100 points.

Back at the scorer’s table it was hard to project the cool authority the role requires. Uniforms were mismatched and sometimes without the numbers so helpful in calculating fouls and points. Referring to “this guy” and “that guy”, the “Whosis Kid” and his teammates went only so far, and the speed of these guys, their effort from baseline to baseline, was wearing out our necks.

Not a new dance, but more basketball, Downieville vs “All Out”. That’s Dillon Herrmann sliding out of the picture on the right.

There were stars, in the Downieville gym, only a few we knew by name. Point Guard Alex Gamboa, on Reno’s “Sportsman” team, spent his college years leading the team at Yale University. One of his teammates was a member of the University of Missouri team. Gamboa was quick, sure, but it was when he stopped (and his defenders kept going) that he created his open shots.

Derick Sturges, on the “Waters” team, scored mostly through the air, with a variety of dunks. Somewhere a helicopter is missing its wings.

Former Downieville coach Kent Grammer was a model of consistency. He scored no foul shots, no 2-point field goals, but no fewer than 19 3-point goals. Would it kill him to shoot a “two”? No one was calling him “the Big Man”, or “The Shooter”, but I’d like to think of him as “Mr. Efficiency”. This predictability did not make him dull. He was a stealthy secret weapon in his games, and if there was a 10-point shot he’d probably specialize at that, too!

The Downieville team was the biggest, in numbers, but it also averaged out as the youngest. When the word gets around about their close, exciting games, their losses by 2, 2, and 3 points, everybody in the world is going to want to play against “Beef”, “the Magician”, and the rest of them. After all, everybody’s heartbreaking loss is another fellow’s thrilling comeback.

Downieville’s players were still thinking of what to call themselves until just a few minutes before the first game.

It started off well, with Steve Loving scoring the game’s first two baskets, the second a dunk. Unfortunately, those were his only points, in this game, with Waters going on to score two points for every one of Downieville’s. Wasn’t this enough? New players kept arriving for Waters, however, and they were older, bigger, and more experienced than the hometown boys.

Waters had four players dunking while Downieville’s biggest player, Travis Foster, tried to keep up at the 3-point line. It was an eye-opener, to be sure. Welcome to the next level, kids. Mason Hemphill was the team’s high scorer at 13 while Waters players scored 25, 23 and 17. Waters scored 57 in the second half, Downieville 26.

Next was a game against a Nevada County team. Tied at the half, our neighbor won by two. Raymond Manning scored 18, Dillon Herrmann totalled 19, with a flurry of 3-point shots that kept the game close.

Then it was time for a break, with locals Herrmann, Tony McCreary, Bo Gilbert, Kevin Marshall, Paul Jordan, Joe Jacobs and Phil Marcantonio all competing in the 3-point contest. Herrmann took a first, Gilbert a third, and McCreary, never known for his outside shooting, made just one of his attempts.

Next up for Downieville was a game against Reno’s “All Out”. This was a thriller, with Downieville leading at half-time and high scorer McCreary (14) tying the game with two free throws and two seconds left. Somehow “All Out” got loose for a full-court pass and a winning basket.

They’d have another chance against “All Out” in the elimination round, the first game Sunday morning after their opponents spent the night sleeping in their cars. The winner would have the dubious opportunity to play “Sportsman”, who many projected as the tourney’s ultimate winner. This time Downieville had a new strategy: keep McCreary and his rebounding in the game. Manning scored 17, McCreary 16. This one actually did go into overtime but the result was the same: an “All Out” victory. Downieville was down .. but not quite out. In the great tradition of “If you can’t beat ‘em ...” six of Downieville’s players joined “All Out” in their game against “Sportsman”. They had not only beaten Downieville .. they absorbed them.

In the end, “Waters” was the last team standing, after an 11-point comeback against Chico’s “Flex” team and a date with Portola’s Grammer and Co. in the finals.

As the caravans headed out the tournament was termed a success. “We ought to do this more often,” was the consensus, as the weary, limping warriors headed home.

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