Monday, February 26, 2001

By Rusty Bryan
Stars and Stripes

Michael Abrams / S&S Kaierslautern's Ryan Olds drives for a basket Saturday against Heidelberg's Patrick Quinones in the boys' Division I final.

MANNHEIM, Germany — Roll up the blueprints.

That Heidelberg basketball rebuilding project is complete.

Old hand Larry Dunlap and newcomers Edwin Coriano, John Adkins, Travis Wesley and Joe Herndon put the finishing touches on the new structure Saturday night with a 66-38 romp over fifth-seeded Kaiserslautern in the championship game of the European Division I basketball tournament.

Long before the tourney, Heidelberg coach Brad Shahan had seen the magnitude of the task his team would face in defending the title it won here last year.

"We’re going out there with four players who have never been here before," he said after his team earned the second seed with a 7-3 league mark.

The four might not have been to Europe’s big dance before, but by the time their debut ended around 10:30 Saturday night, they looked like Barishnikovs out there. Playing defense with the kind of energy they brought to the court all season, the once-and-future champions held dangerous K-town to single-digit scoring in each of the first three quarters in route a 37-20 edge after the first 24 minutes.

Forced to foul in a vain attempt to make up the deficit, Kaiserslautern sent Heidelberg to the line for 21 shots in the fourth quarter alone, and the Lions sank 12 of them to bury the Cinderella Red Raiders for good.

The Lions’ success came as no surprise to Wesley, a sophomore who posted a game-high 13 points on Saturday.

"We worked hard the whole season," said Wesley, who ended up on the all-tourney team in his first season on the varsity. "We feel like we earned this title. We're the best team."

He’ll get no argument from K-town, which endured a dismal four-point second quarter that had the K-town coaching staff sitting alone on the bench at halftime, searching for a way to undo what was happening.

Robert Kindell, whose brilliant shooting the Friday night helped K-town send third-seeded Ramstein to Saturday’s third-place game and earned him tourney MVP consideration, canned a long three-pointer at the first-period buzzer, but that would be his only field goal of the night. He got into early foul trouble, and finally fouled out, inconsolable, with 4:49 to play and just five points.

Stan Harris, another of the Friday night heroes, had a team-high 11 for K-town, but he continually was forced hoist three-point shots in the attempt to close the gap and finished just 3-for-11 from the floor. Jonathan Griffin added 10 points on 3-for-6 shooting, but for the rest of the Red Raiders, the fairy godmother who assisted them into the title game had left the building.

Dunlap, too, got into early foul trouble, but 6-for-8 shooting from the floor by all-tourney choice Adkins, who ended with 12 points, and free-throw success by Coriano, another all-tourney choice who ended with 11 points, kept trouble at bay.

Wesley might have been expected to feel some pressure stepping into a starting role on a defending champion, but that wasn’t the case.

Shahan worked his squad too hard to leave them any time to dwell on real or perceived inadequacies.

"It was all those hard practices." Wesley said. "Suicides and mini-drills."

And practice, as we all know, makes perfect.

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