Championship churn: four years, four titles
Elite not dominant but win another crown in $2M winner-take-all event
When a team rises to a level of dominance that can earn it back-to-backto-back-to-back championships, there isn’t much that could bring it back down to earth.
At first, Overseas Elite didn’t cruise in the final of The Basketball Tournament on Friday night at Morgan State. They instead survived, outlasting an Eberlein Drive team nipping at a tenuous lead from the match’s start.
When a rainfall of blue, white and gold confetti streamed on their shoulders, the Elite knew they had captured their fourth straight TBT crown, four in just five years of the tournament’s existence, beating the Drive, 70-58.
With the win, the Elite pocketed the winner-take-all $2 million, raising their total winnings to $7 million since their dynasty began.
Immediately, both teams learned they were more evenly matched than maybe either expected. Center Willie Reed led the Drive to the scoreboard first on a free throw that circled the rim; center DeAndre Kane responded by a whip-quick layup for the Elite. But both teams became more acquainted with missing the net than actually making anything — with half the first quarter gone, the Elite were barely leading the Drive, 7-5.
What had been an overtly acrobatic team Thursday night, the Drive became grounded in the first quarter. Likewise, the Elite — who had an explosive start against the Golden Eagles in the semifinals, running out to a 13-0 lead — felt the Drive’s hot breath on their neck, as Jerome Randle tied it at 12 with 2:18 on the clock.
The Elite had, well, elite tricks up their sleeves. With the final seconds whittling down, Kane waited out the clock before firing a last-second pass to Jhondre Jefferson, whose layup gave the Elite as big of a lead as they were going to get over this Drive team early, 17-12 after nine minutes.
So the Drive got crafty in response. Rather than each player trying to do it on his own, they began to flash some of the athletic plays they demonstrated the night before, in tune with one another.
The quintet on the floor flicked passes across the paint to keep the Elite chasing them until former Golden State Warriors forward James Michael McAdoo was ready, dropping the ball in to open the second quarter. Before long, Drive guard Donald Sloan had them tied again, 22-22.
But sometimes the game was out of the Drive’s hands.
With the ball in Randle’s hands, he tried to start a fast break, only to bump into the referee. The ball was jarred from his hands, skittering out of bounds — effectively ending what could have been a chance for the Michigan-based team to build a lead for the first time. That was then followed by a slam-dunk from Elite forward D.J. Kennedy, who put his team back in control.
Randle then wound down the clock before drawing Elite guard Kyle Fogg into a foul. When the buzzer sounded at halftime, the Elite clutched a vapor-thin lead, 35-33.
The Drive outscored the Elite in the second frame, 21-18, but to really pull away from the three-time defending champions, they needed a true run. The third quarter proved, instead, to be more of the same. Both teams hit the occasional layup to break stretches of missed baskets and offensive rebounds. At the end, the Elite led the Drive by just 52-50.
This was not the same dominance the Elite held over the Golden Eagles on Thursday night. They wanted that feeling back. So the champions burst onto the court in the fourth quarter, barraging the Drive with seven points in just one minute. In that same stretch, the Detroit-area team had nothing.
The Elite rode their longest advantage of the night (63-54) into Elam ending with the magic target at 70. TBT mostly follows NCAA rules but invokes the Elam ending. At the first dead ball after the four minute mark in the fourth quarter, the game clock shuts off. A target score is set by adding seven to the leading team’s score. The first team to reach the target score wins.
The Drive drew two fouls to open the final dash, bouncing the rim right and left, also going 2-for-2 on free throws. Any hope of a comeback crumbled as Randle was charged with a flagrant foul and Justin Burrell tipped the game-winner into the basket.