Rota's Tre'von Owens shoots over Bamberg's Treshaun Foster in the Division III title game at the DODDS-Europe basketball championships. Rota defended their title by beating the Barons 50-34. Owens scored 32 points in the game and was named the Division III tourney MVP. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Rota's Tre'von Owens shoots over Bamberg's Treshaun Foster in the Division III title game at the DODDS-Europe basketball championships. Rota defended their title by beating the Barons 50-34. Owens scored 32 points in the game and was named the Division III tourney MVP. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Rota's Marc Oden draws the foul from Bamberg's Michael Johnson in the Division III title game at the DODDS-Europe basketball championships. Rota defended their title by beating the Barons 50-34. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Bamberg's Andray Gibson, left, drives to the basket against Rota's Marc Oden in the Division III final at the DODDS-Europe basketball championships. Rota defended their Division III crown by beating Bamberg 50-34 at the DODDS-Europe basketball championships in Wiesbaden, Saturday. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Bamberg's Terry Williams shoots over Rota's Terrance Paris in the Division III title game at the DODDS-Europe basketball championships. Bamberg fell to the defending division champions 50-34. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Rota coach Ben Jefferson congratulates Marc Oden and the rest of the Admirals after they defended their Division III crown by beating Bamberg 50-34 at the DODDS-Europe basketball championships in Wiesbaden, Saturday. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
WIESBADEN, Germany – Stars and Stripes’ 2011 player of the year Tre’von Owens put in his bid for being named Stripes’ player of the century Saturday by burning the Bamberg Barons for 32 points in the Rota Admirals’ 50-34 European Division III championship-game victory.
Owens, who’ll move on to Cal-Riverside of NCAA Division I this fall, also grabbed 14 rebounds, blocked three shots and stole the ball three times in spite of playing with a bandaged right hand.
“I had to play with it,” Owens said after Rota claimed its third straight D-III title. “This was the championship game.”
Bamberg, tempered during the regular season by playing seven games against Division I schools and the other six against D-II teams, attempted to counter Owens by assigning all-tournament players Terry Williams, who stands 6-foot-5, and 6-4 Anthony Cortright to deal with the relentlessly mobile 6-6 All-European.
Owens, voted the tourney’s MVP, responded by striking for 24 first-half points and putting both Bamberg juniors into foul trouble. Williams and Cortright combined to foul Owens five times in the first 10 minutes, 32 seconds of the first half, sending him to the foul line for 11 shots. Owens made 10 of them.
Even so, Bamberg seemed to be getting a handle on Owens after intermission, mounting a 5-0 run over the half’s first six minutes to cut their gap to 30-25. It momentarily defused Owens by fronting him with a guard when he went low.
It didn’t prove to be a permanent solution, however. Owens, who was two-of-three from behind the three-point arc in the first half, canned another three-pointer and added a tough bucket underneath to cap a 7-0 run to restore a double-digit lead Rota maintained the rest of the way.
“We had to adjust,” Owens said of the move. “We wanted to finish strong.”
As it had throughout the tournament, Rota’s trapping press produced points from turnovers. All-tourney player Terrence Paris pulled off five steals as a result of the pressure and finished with 10 points.
Bamberg, the 2011 D-II runner-up, won the D-III title in 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2008 and the championship of defunct D-IV in 2007. It returned to D-III this fall when the school lost much of its enrollment to newly opened Schweinfurt. Freshman Andrew Reed led the Barons with 11 points. Williams added eight points when he wasn’t occupied with guarding Owens.
Saturday marked the fifth straight European title game for Rota, and the fourth straight for Owens, who endured the lone loss of his DODDS-Europe career in a 55-43 loss to Sigonella in the 2009 D-IV title game when he was a freshman.
Saturday, he said that defeat spurred his team to the three-peat it completed against Bamberg. Rota was unbeaten against DODDS-Europe competition for the final three years of his high school career.
“We couldn’t take losing any more,” he said. “We had to win the rest.”
