Tristan Roache scored on a 10-foot jumper with four seconds remaining to lift the Blue Fire to a come-from-behind 21-19 victory over the Red Lions in the Senior Intermediate Boys Division championship game of the Coral Springs Basketball Club at the Coral Springs Gymnasium.
Roache, 12, of Boca Raton, and Bryce Jacobs each finished with 10 points as the Blue Fire rallied from an early 10-0 deficit. They pulled to within 10-7 at halftime and took a 17-13 lead before the Red Lions were able to battle back and eventually tie the game at 19-19 on a basket by Myles Francis with 40 seconds left in the contest.
“This was my first game-winning basket of this year,” said Roache, a Loggers Run Middle School seventh-grader. “I wanted to get a bucket as soon as we could so there wouldn’t be overtime.”
Did he think the shot was going in?
“No, not really,” Roache said. “When I saw it go in, I was happy. This is big. It is like my third championship. I’d like to go as far as I can.”
Eric Stuehrenberg has been with the CSBC for nearly six years. He is also an athletic director with the program in addition to being the coach of the Blue Fire.
“(League president) Richie (Fraiman) and the other board members do a great job making sure that everybody has a great time,” said Stuehrenberg, whose team finished 10-3 and won their last eight games of the season. They also avenged an 18-13 defeat early in the season to the Red Lions. “It is just a fantastic organization. My son has had opportunities to play travel and I have turned it down because I enjoy the camaraderie and everything that they bring to these kids.”
Stuehrenberg had won one other title (Trainee 4) before this season. He suffered through a one-win campaign last year.
“It was miserable,” he said. “We went 7-3 this season and the boys really came together. Then we swept through the playoffs. The boys really played well together, and they really trust each individual player.
“We were down 10 at the end of one (quarter),” he said. “They (Red Lions) are really strong defensively and they always come to play. I told our boys to stay within our game and continue to play. I also saw that their guards were only going right and dishing it into their big guys. Once we blocked them, the momentum swung our way.”
The Red Lions’ Avi Gabbay led all scorers with 11 points, while Andres Castro added five in a losing effort for the Lions (7-6).
“It was fun,” said Gabbay, 12, of Parkland. He’s a seventh-grader at Westglades Middle School and played a year in the CSBC. “It was a rocky year and took a lot to get here. I was gone for a while during the regular games and my team did good this year. I think we could have done better in the playoffs.
“None of us had ever played together before,” he said. “I thought (during the year) that we could have gone far. Maybe not to the finals but the semifinals.”
“The league was an experience,” said Red Lions’ assistant coach Amos Bien, who has coached in the league for about five years. “To be able to watch and bring people together, especially people that don’t know each other, to play together and build that bond says a lot. We are just grateful that we were able to do that.”
Derek Scheidt scored a game-high 23 points to lead the Green Celtics (11-2) to a 42-31 win over the Red Team (7-7) in the Senior Junior Varsity Boys Division final. The Celtics led at one point 26-11 in the first half before Nirel Earley led the Red Team back to within 36-30 with 41 seconds remaining in the game.
Keaton Windell made two free throws with 30 seconds left and Scheidt converted two free throws of his own with 15 seconds to ice the game. Windell finished the game with 9 points.
“Our team came out strong with a different game plan than we had normally played all season because we played on a bigger court,” Scheidt said. “Coach wanted us to get our legs under us and not to get tired by the end, which threw the other team off of their game plan. Hitting our free throws and never giving up was the reason we were able to pull out the win.”
In other championship games: Trainee 4 Division: The Black Attack rolled to a 27-16 victory over the Golden Knights as Jonah De Armas had a game-high 10 points, while Ryan Dashouse added 8. Jaiden Morrison had nine points in a losing effort. Senior Intermediate Girls Division: Marlee Mills scored 13 of her team’s 14 points, including six in the decisive fourth quarter to lift the Purple Dragons to a 14-13 win over the Green Incredible Hulk. The Hulk was paced by Shiloh Higgins who scored six points. Junior Varsity Girls Division: Miranda Byrnes scored a game-high 11 points as the Pink Goblins pulled out a 23-16 win over the Green Goblins. Georgia Polk scored a team-high 6 points in a losing effort. High School Boys Division: The Bananas recorded a 52-49 victory over the Warriors in the Boys High School Division behind Joey Talamas’ 20 points. Sandrian Smith scored 18 points in a losing effort.
The teams played a 10-game regular season from the end of June to the end of August. There were 68 teams and over 600 players in the recent season, featuring girls and boys age 6 and up through high school along with men 18 and up.
