It took overtime, but when the dust settled, reality had asserted itself, and the Poly Jackrabbits had overtaken the Narbonne Gauchos to win the regional state championship, earning the right to play against Berkeley High next weekend in Sacramento for the state championship.  Before the final buzzer sounded, there was pandemonium.

As an aside: in this wacky world of professional sports journalism, you’ll rarely read a report from a journalist about unfair or poor refereeing.  This isn’t because it doesn’t happen, or because it’s not a factor, but because journalists are worried about damaging their reputation with a league, or about appearing to have sour grapes with an event they’re supposed to be impartial about.  Well, since we’re not (yet) ragingly famous, I can tell you this, with little fear of repercussion: I’ve never seen worse reffing in a basketball game, on any level, than what went on in this game.  There were twenty fouls called in the first half, and almost forty in the entire game, at a rate of more than one per minute.  Sixteen of Narbonne’s 25 first-half points came off of free throws, and the referees seemed to have a particular bone to pick with Jasmine Dixon, who was plagued by bad calls all night (including her fourth in the fourth quarter, when she was whistled after a Gaucho inadvertently tripped over Dixon’s teammate, April Cook—Dixon was a yard and a half away).  You may not read about that in the PT or the Times, and that’s their decision.  My take is, it was a huge factor in the game (even leaving a visibly upset coach Carl Buggs silence-stricken for the first time in his career), and thus, I believe you deserve to hear about it.  (On a more humorous note, the LA Arena also horrendously mismanaged the game, but I’m going to talk about that on Sports Night, so be sure to download!).

Overtime gets underway in the LA Arena.

Despite the refs’ best efforts to suppress any kind of basketball game from breaking out, there is some stuff to talk about.  The Gauchos deserve credit for playing unbelievable defense, keeping Poly out of the paint for the whole of the first half, harassing them with a quick and scrappy zone defense that held Poly at around 20% shooting at halftime, when Narbonne had a 25-17 lead.  Dixon was held out of most of the second and third quarters because of the aforementioned foul trouble, but made up for it in the fourth, where Poly trailed by six with two and a half minutes left.  Dixon took over, scoring eight points and grabbing a crucial steal, as well as orchestrating the offense from the top of the three-point arc, where she doesn’t often roam.

Poly battled back, and Monique Oliver hit one of two free throws to tie the game.  Poly got the rebound on the second, but Narbonne stole an inbound pass, and sat on the ball to take it to overtime.  After that, it was all Poly, and all Dixon, as the Jackrabbits went on to outscore the Gauchos 16-3, completely shutting down Narbonne’s Reiko Thomas, who was spectacular in the first half before disappearing, due most likely to exhaustion, in the second.  Dixon, despite missing half of the game with fouls, finished with 23 points, 20 rebounds, and four steals.  As Coach Buggs said after the game, “That’s what Jasmine Dixon is all about, right there.”  Oliver also contributed fifteen points, but most of Poly’s team was silent, a rarity for the very deep Jackrabbits’ bench.  They’ll have to get more help from their backups, and the other starters (other than April Cook, who single-handedly kept the Rabbits in the game emotionally in the third quarter) if they want to beat Berkeley in a week for their third consecutive state championship.

Also listen to Sports Night for details on catching a group bus up to Sacramento for the game, in addition to hilarious tales about the LA Arena.