Salem CC finishes third in national tournament after beating DC-North Lake on Rines’ late 3-pointer; Gibson makes all-tournament team
JUCO DIVISION III TOURNAMENT
At Herkimer, N.Y.
Saturday’s Games
Fifth-place game
Richland 70, Joliet 66
Third-place game
Salem CC 76, Dallas North Lake 75
Championship game
Northern Essex 68, Dallas Richland 62
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
HERKIMER, N.Y. – Idris Rines didn’t just hit the shot of the game, it was the shot of Salem CC’s record-breaking year. No, it did not win a championship. It did more than that. It salvaged a season.
The Mighty Oaks came here to the JUCO Division III national tournament to win a national championship. That dream was dashed Friday night, but Rines made sure they made good on coach Mike Green’s overnight boast of going home with something when he delivered a pure 3-pointer from the top of the key with 17 seconds left to bring them a 76-75 win over third-seeded Dallas College North Lake.
Back-to-back losses to end the season would’ve been a bummer for a team that had the best record in the country coming into this JUCO Division III national tournament. Instead, thanks to Rines’ shining moment, just like last year, the Mighty Oaks (32-3) are one of the few college basketball teams in America that will end their season with a win.
By beating the Blazers (23-12), they finished third in the national tournament, two spots higher than they did when they won on Saturday here a year ago.
“You want to go out winning, man,” Green said. “You want to go out smiling. You don’t want to be in here all sad. Our guys answered the bell.
“You come down here to win everything, you lose one and then you kind of get sidetracked. Try to tell those boys to fight. They worked way too hard to leave here with nothing. The light switched on.”
The play that produced the winning basket was supposed to be Rines setting a back screen for Nayeem Johnson to get a layup. But when he saw how much room the defense had left him, he called for the inbounds pass from Nasseem Wright and let it fly. He finished with nine points and six rebounds.
“That wasn’t my first game-winner, but that might have been like the biggest game-winner,” Rines said. “I had a couple in high school, but nothing like a championship game-winner.
“MG trusted me. The play wasn’t designed for that, but we just executed it. And that might have been our biggest execution play out of a timeout. We struggled all year executing out of timeouts.
“The biggest thing was sending our sophomores out with their last game and winning it. We wanted to come out of here with something. We knew we didn’t win the (district) and once we lost that we thought we had nothing, but third place gets a trophy and we’d love to send Mike (Goodwin), Stef (Phillips) and Nayeem (Johnson) off with something. Once MG told us we had an idea we could win something we just knew we had to.”
Asked if he ever saved a season before, he said, “not like this.”
“We all knew it was going in,” said guard Zyaire Gibson, the Mighty Oaks’ true 3-point specialist. “We practice that shot every day. Wide open. He had it. I heard coach Mike Green say ‘Shoot it!’ and we knew it was good.”
Rines had something of a reputation as a 3-point shooter in high school despite a 6-5 frame that would hint otherwise and he showed his worth from beyond the arc with the Mighty Oaks from the very first game at Atlantic Cape. He hit a clutch one in that game and shot it at 30.1 percent for the season. His two Saturday gave him 31 for the year.
“He’s versatile,” Green said. “He’s a guard in a forward’s body. He’s just so much stronger than everybody so we post him. Everything we told him before the season what we were going to do with him we did it and he bought into it.”
The Mighty Oaks had to play a little defense after Rines’ basket but Nayeem Johnson said “that was the easy part.” Because of all the foul trouble they had in the second half, they knew they had to stay disciplined, and they pulled it off.
Johnson came off his man to help Jarrell Little close off Elijah Black’s drive down in the lane with the clock winding down and then stepped out to challenge Zach Thompson’s off-balanced 3 at the buzzer that missed everything.
The Mighty Oaks had a lot going against them. They played without injured point guard Saaid Lee, their two leading scorers (Little and Wright) were in heavy foul trouble, North Lake was in the double bonus midway through the second half and Salem hadn’t taken a free throw yet, and they were down 10 with 9:57 to play.
They brought it back with a 10-2 run to made it 60-58 with 8:25 to go. They tied it on a three-point play by Rines at 8:08 and took a 64-62 lead on Nayeem Johnson’s three-point play on either side of the 8:00 media timeout. It went back and forth the rest of the game.
Romiel Carter gave the Blazers a 75-73 lead on a free throws with 24.5 seconds left and Green called time with 19.2 to set the stage for Rines’ winning 3.
“We definitely matured during the season,” Gibson said. “We talk about adversity all year. We’ve had games, certain teams that weren’t supposed to be in it as long that stayed in it and we had to fight and fight and fight. Today we made sure we didn’t harp on yesterday’s loss and we came together as the game went on and we made sure everyone was still on the same page. We kept executing and as MG preaches execute plays, we made shots and got stops and we got back in the game and won it.
“We came out at halftime and told each other this is our last 20 minutes playing with each other for this season. For our sophomores we’re going to send them home on a good note. We’re walking home with a trophy – trophies – and they feel good. Everybody’s walking out of here with a smile, nobody has their head down, it feels great.”
Gibson made the all-tournament team for his body of work in the event. He had 39 points and seven 3-points in three tournament games. He 11 points, eight rebounds and three assists in the consolation game.
Little was their leading scorer with 18 points despite playing the last 17 minutes with four fouls. Johnson, making his first start in a Salem uniform, had 17 points.
ACORNS: Top-seeded Northern Essex won the championship game, beating Dallas College Richland, 68-62. Richland was bidding to become the lowest seeded team (10th) to win the national championship … With his 597 points this season, Little is now 16th on the Mighty Oaks’ all-time scoring list. Wright (557) is tied for 21st and Lee (5-7) is tied for 29th … The national tournament the next two years will be played in Rochester, Minn.
This story will be updated.
SALEM CC 76, DALLAS NORTH LAKE 75
SALEM CC (32-3): Jarrell Little 6-15 3-3 18, Zyaire Gibson 4-11 2-3 11, Nasseem Wright 2-6 2-2 6, Nayeem Johnson 4-12 9-11 17, Stefan Phillips 4-6 2-2 13, Jahseir Sayles 0-2 0-0 0, Qua Smith 1-2 0-0 2, Idris Rines 3-9 1-1 9, Mike Goodwin 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 24-63 19-22 76.
DALLAS NORTH LAKE (23-12): Santana Spivey 2-8 0-0 5, Jordan Edwards 5-8 6-8 16, Elijah Black 2-8 0-0 4, Zach Thompson 2-7 8-12 12, Romiel Carter 8-16 6-8 22, Zaedyn Owens 0-8 2-4 2, JaDen Stiggers 4-7 2-2 12, Damian Smith 0-0 0-0 0, Ngozi Ofili 0-0 0-0 0, Marco Assirifix 1-1 0-0 2. Totals 24-63 24-34 75.
| Salem CC | 37 | 39- | 76 |
| Dallas North Lake | 38 | 37- | 75 |
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