Warriors roll to seventh title
Even with McDonald’s All-American Nassir Little playing sparingly before fouling out in the fourth quarter, Orlando Christian Prep overwhelmed Fort Myers Canterbury for a 66-48 win in Tuesday night’s Class 3A boys basketball state championship game.
The Warriors (21-9), who won 13 of their final 14 games after a tough start against a rough regular season schedule, claimed their seventh state title. They join Miami High as the only schools in FHSAA boys basketball history to win seven in a span of 11 seasons.
OCP is 7-1 in FHSAA finals since 2008 under former coach Reggie Kohn and Treig Burke, a longtime assistant who now has two championships in two years as a head coach.
“To hold a good team who can score to 48 points is unbelievable,” Burke said. “Defense is where we’ve been good all year.”
The Warriors led 15-5 late in the first quarter after Jordan Rodriguez made two 3-point shots and Little knocked down another trey. It was 29-10 midway through the second period after C.J. Walker and Jordan Goodson made 3-pointers and Walker, a 6-foot-8 junior, dunked off a spin move.
Walker led four OCP double-digit scorers with 14 points.
“When one person is done you got to step it up,” Walker said of Little’s foul trouble. “I’m not the only one on my team who stepped up.”
Senior DeJuan Lockett had 10 points and 10 rebounds. Ronaldo “Rondo” Segu, OCP’s senior point guard, had 11 points, as did Little in fewer than 19 minutes of playing time.
The 6-foot-7 North Carolina recruit and astounding leaper picked up his third and fourth fouls when he attempted to finish highlight-reel dunks over Canterbury defenders in the third quarter. Little reentered the game with his team up by 20 in the fourth quarter. But he was whistled for a technical and his fifth foul, apparently for taunting an opponent, after he made a 3-pointer with 2:46 to go.
Rodriguez had 9 points, all on 3-point shots, to cap a high school career that was on hold when he suffered a fractured fibia in the third game of his junior season.
“There’s no better feeling than this,” Rodriguez said. “I just wanted to contribute to the team as much as I could for my senior season.”
OCP had just three dunks, pedestrian in comparison to its 10 in a semifinal romp. But the Warriors shot 52-percent from the field (26-of-50) and 47-percent from beyond the arc (8-of-17). They held the Cougars to 36-percent shooting.
OCP is now one of six schools with seven or more championships in the history of FHSAA boys basketball finals, which tipped off in 1922 with one classification. Miami High leads the list with 18.