Rota's Tre'von Owens aims for the hoop as Sigonella's Kalil Bowen defends. Rota beat Sigonella, 65-61, to take the DODDS Europe Division III boys basketball title. Owens was named the tourney DIII MVP. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Rota's Tre'von Owens aims for the hoop as Sigonella's Kalil Bowen defends. Rota beat Sigonella, 65-61, to take the DODDS Europe Division III boys basketball title. Owens was named the tourney DIII MVP. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Sigonella's Larry Stevenson uses an acrobatic move to get past Rota's Tre'von Owens in the Division III title game. Rota won the game, 65-61. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Rota's Tim Drake lifts coach Ben Anderson in a bear hug as the Rota Admirals celebrate their 65-61 win over Sigonella in the DODDS Europe Division III boys basketball final. From left are Nick Holland, Tre'von Owens, Niko Fichera, Drake, Anderson, assistant coach Jeffery Shelton and Sean Mowrey. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
MANNHEIM, Germany — Rota junior center Tim Drake was talking about the collisions down low in Saturday night, but his assessment applied equally to the European Division III boys basketball championship game in its entirety.
“It was a battle,” Drake said after his top-seeded Admirals ground out a 65-61 victory over the second-seeded Sigonella Jaguars to earn their second-straight European title, both of them the results of wins over Sigonella in the championship game.
Rota spent most of the game jumping out to double-digit leads — the most significant of them 45-31 with 6 minutes, 10 seconds to go in the third quarter — only to see the Jaguars mount comeback after comeback. The Jags never led, but were as close as three points down, a one-possession game, twice within the final 2:23.
“My dad told me before the game they weren’t going to give it to us,” said Rota junior guard Tre’Von Owens, the tourney MVP who scored a game-high 29 points.
“We knew we’d have to play hard.”
Much of the impetus for playing a game as hard as Saturday’s came from Owens’ fellow All-European, Sigonella senior guard Larry Stevenson.
Stevenson, who led the Jags with 26 points and fouled out with 28 seconds to play, scored seven of his points in the final stanza. His three-point play on a drive to the rim with 2:25 to go cut Sigonella’s gap to three points for the first time since the game’s opening minute.
“It’s fun to play against a guy like that,” Owens said. “It’s good competition.”
For all the efforts of their stars, the finalists’ role players came up big on Saturday, too.
Backing Stevenson’s output for Sigonella were Michael Mink, with 15 points, and Jack Wegman with 14. Wegman, however, missed crunch time when he fouled out in the third quarter.
Rota’s all-tourney player Terrence Paris scored 18 points and Drake got 10, along with collecting eight rebounds despite missing a large stretch of the late going with foul trouble.
“It was the whole team,” Drake said. “We’ve been training all year so that every player knows what he can contribute when the going gets tough.”
Drake said Sigonella’s refusal to go away provoked an equal reaction in the two-time champs.
“We just told ourselves to pick it up again,” he said about his team’s reaction to Sigonella’s unceasing chipping away at Rota’s lead. “We told ourselves we’re not going to lose.”
