<\/p>\n
10:00 | <\/strong>It wasn’t the opening the defending league champs were hoping for, but after starting 1-3, the Panthers just won their third straight, to improve to 4-3 in the Moore League with a convincing win over Millikan, 67-55. <\/span>“Typical Jordan,” said longtime coach Ron Massey. <\/span>“We always seem to play better in the second round, after we’ve broken down film and the kids learn to respect their opponents a little.” <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Massey said that was especially the case against Millikan, since the Rams’ Malcolm Whittington ran roughshod over Jordan last time they played (a narrow Jordan win). <\/span>On Wednesday, he had seventeen points, but never took over the game the way he did in their first meeting, when he was in the 30-point range. <\/span><\/p>\n In addition to bottling Millikan’s best scorers, Jordan executed fundamentals better, grabbing almost as many offensive rebounds as Millikan did defensive, finishing much better at the basket than the Rams did, and even knocking down their free throws better than normal. <\/span>“Please, don’t even talk to me about free throws,” said the beleaguered Massey. <\/span>Still, Jordan sunk 18 free throws, while with 2:30 left in the game, Millikan only had one player who’d put one in the bucket.<\/p>\n Millikan was led by Whittington, and Andrew Scott, who also had 17 points. <\/span>Jeremiah Blandin was a good spark defensively, with six blocks. <\/span>Jordan was paced by Jesse Jones, who had 18 points, Raynard Tyler, with 12, and Isiah Hicks, with 13. <\/span>“We just need to keep coming together and playing as a team,” said Hicks after the game, when asked what the Panthers need to do to keep their streak alive. <\/span>They’ll have the bye this Friday before traveling to play Compton on the road on Wednesday, in a game with huge implications. <\/span>Millikan is on the road Friday at Wilson.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jordan defended home court emphatically to run their league streak up to three straight wins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2318"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2318"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}