Army, Marine Corps off to good start
in Armed Forces basketball tourney
By Rusty Bryan, Stars
and Stripes
Photos by Raymond T. Conway, Stars and
Stripes
KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — If veteran guard Kelvin Hamilton is correct, his Marine
Corps team and the Army did more than claim first-game victories Monday in the
double-round-robin 2001 Armed Forces basketball championships.
They also laid a foundation.
"The first game is the most important," Hamilton said after his team had
toppled defending champion Air Force 80-69 in Monday’s second game. "It sets the
tone for the rest of the tournament."
The sound of that tone also pleased the All-Army team, which survived foul trouble by a
couple of its key inside players to turn back Navy 74-71 in the opener of this six-day
event.
Marine Corps 80, Air Force 69
Air Force's Gregory Streeter
penetrates the lane, only to have his shot rejected by the Marines' Jelani Nix |
The Leathernecks highlighted opening day by staging clinics in high-pressure defense
and beating a zone defense as they broke away from 34-34 at halftime.
In a rematch of last year’s title game won by the Air Force, the Marines harried
their opponents all over the floor with a display of knee-to-knee man-to-man defense that
never let the airmen get comfortable.
"We couldn’t afford to let them," said Marines assistant coach Antonio
Robinson. "They shoot the ball too well."
They do indeed. Monday, the Air Force was 30-for-51 from the floor, including a 5-for-5
performance for 13 points by Gregory Streeter and a 7-for-9 outing by center Austin
Layton, who led the team with 14 points. Troy Miles had 13 points, all in the second half,
and Darrell Hamilton 11 for the Air Force.
But the Marines made their opponents work for every shot, crashing the boards as if
they were hitting the beach at Iwo Jima and putting the Air Force on the line only six
times.
In the meantime, the Marine backcourt — Hamilton, Billy Shanks and Chivas Whipple
— were taking Air Force zone apart.
Air Force's Tyrone Wilson,
left, fires a jump shot over Marines' Tyrone Spears |
"They surprised us with that zone in the first half," said Hamilton, who led
all scorers with 17 points. "We had to change things up."
Robinson explained how.
"You have to attack a zone," Robinson said. "If you pass the ball around
outside, you’re doing what they want. We had to get the ball into the middle. Once
you get the ball into the middle, you can do anything you want."
The attack worked as planned. Inside pillars Jelani Nix, Jimmy Wheeler and Tyrone
Spears handled the ball brilliantly once it came to them, either by going strongly to the
hoop — Wheeler scored 15 points, Nix 14 and Spears eight, all his coming after
intermission — or kicking out to a suddenly open shooter. Shanks was the chief
beneficiary in that regard, scoring 10 of his 15 points after halftime.
"Two years ago, we beat them [for the title]," Robinson said, "and last
year, they beat us. This year, it might be our turn."
Army 74, Navy 71
Army's Elijah Coppolk
jumps on a loose ball, ahead of Navy's Marcellus Anderson. |
With inside defenders Courtney Joseph and T.C. Shields on the bench for much of the
second half with four fouls each, responsibility for defending the paint in a game, which
was tight all the way, fell on the slender shoulders of Wilson Winters.
"That’s fine with me," Winters smiled, even after having to deal with
the Navy’s formidable Marcellus Anderson for most of the final 20 minutes.
Wilson held the burly Anderson, whose scoring and rebounding had kept Navy in the game
during the first 20 minutes, to six points after intermission.
"There are a lot of big guys here," shrugged Winters, who played college ball
for Georgia Southern. "I could jump with him, so I was OK."
Navy's Marcellus Anderson,
right, tries to launch a shot over Army's Gregory Owens. |
While that battle was going on, former West Point star Babe Kwasniak was making up for
Shields’ absence from the offense with two of his four tree-pointers on the night.
Shields scored 11 of his 14 points before intermission, with several of those buckets
coming off precise entry passes from Craig Marcelin, the former Kaiserslautern star out of
Central Arkansas, and Kwasniak. Kwasniak finished the game tied for scoring honors with
Anderson at 16.
Army led 43-41 at halftime, and Navy stayed close with more success than the Army had
planned on the offensive glass.
"We’ve got to do a better job of boxing out," Winters said.
John Jackson scored 15 points for Navy, and Patrick Robinson added 11.
The teams in the tournament are made up of the best players from their respective
services worldwide. Tuesday, they were to have played in Heidelberg. Wednesday night, the
teams are to return to Kaiserslautern’s Vogelweh gym, with Army-Air Force at 6 and
Navy-Marine Corps at 8. Thursday, the venue is Grafenwöhr, and Friday, the teams travel
to Spangdahlem. Saturday’s final games are back at Vogelweh.
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