HEIDELBERG, Germany — Izzel King buried two three-pointers in the final 1:10 of overtime Sunday, giving Heidelberg a 66-62 victory over Schweinfurt in the opening men’s game of the 2010 IMCOM-Europe Army Basketball League.
King’s threes, consecutive daggers from the left baseline, put the Generals up 64-59. They allowed Heidelberg to shrug off a five-minute scoring drought at the start of the second half, 10 blocked shots by Schweinfurt’s Brett Thomas and a missed layup that would have won the game in regulation.
King’s first OT three, his third of the game on a 19-point afternoon, was the most difficult. It made multiple rotations in the rim before falling through. The second hit nothing but net.
Both shots also provided a rousing start to the revived regular-season schedule, which was dormant the past two seasons.
“It’s wonderful,” said Heidelberg guard Pablo Reid, an eight-year veteran of Army Europe basketball who scored 12 points. “The more regular-season games we get, the better we’ll play.”
Getting better is important to Reid, who drove the baseline with three seconds left in regulation and the score tied at 57 only to have his layup roll across the rim.
“We haven’t been in the Army-Air Force Final Four in a while,” he said. “We want to get back there.”
Mike Olds led Schweinfurt with 18 points.
Games scheduled for three other sites in Germany were snowed out Sunday.
Heidelberg’s women won 68-58 behind 35 points from Amelia Tillman. But defeat did nothing to limit the enthusiasm of Schweinfurt’s Kim Horton, who scored 21 points in her league debut.
“This is my first year,” she said. “It’s a good start to the season.”
The season is scheduled to run through March, when the nine military communities participating in the league will join other interested garrisons in the U.S. Forces Europe championships scheduled March 25-28 at Ramstein. By then, teams expect to be playing at a higher level.
“League play is about development,” Heidelberg sports director Thomas Bensonsaid said of the turnover-filled men’s contest. Heidelberg lost the ball 24 times, Schweinfurt 36. “They’ll be better by March.”
