2009 Pearland Classic Recap
Posted by texasbasketball14 on April 29, 2009
This past weekend, the Texas D-I Ambassadors (Carter) travelled again to Houston for the 2009 Pearland Classic. After an amazing performance the previous weekend, it would take our absolute best to have the same kind of success.
Friday night, we played the the J Prince Houston Hoopstars Elite. This was a terrific team, who has been together for four years. They a tremendous inside player (7’0″) and very string guards. This was by far the most physical game we’ve played and it definitely showed our youth, especially at the guard position. However, we kept competing but it just wasn’t our night. It was an extremely disappointing evening, but little did we know that it was going to get worse.
On our way back to the hotel, we not only found out that one of our guards broke a finger, we also had to drive through a flood, caused by a record 8 inches of rain in two hours. Let me put it in perspective, water from 5 inches deep to 5 feet deep across the area. It took most people anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours to drive the 12 mile stretch back to the hotel. Thankfully everyone is safe, some automobiles weren’t so lucky.
Saturday afternoon we played the Louisiana Future. they had beaten J Prince earlier that morning in overtime. This was our opportunity to create a three-way tie for the pool. This was a game we controlled for the most part. We had the lead for 90% of the contest. This was a very scrappy team full of athletes. The hit shots at the end of regulation, to go to overtime. In overtime, we controlled it again, but again they hit a shot to go to a second overtime. In the second overtime, they prevailed for a four point win. It was a heart breaking loss. Our Juniors, Carl Meyertons, Guss Leeper, and Jean Maurice Blanchard kept us in this game. Those three together had a fantastic game.
Saturday evening was our first bracket game against the San Marcos Saints, who won their pool. Fortunately, we were placed in a super pool, which still put us in the Platinum Bracket. We handled San Marcos fairly easy, with exception of the last 8 minutes, when they trimmed the lead of 25 down to 13. We ended up winning by 23.
Later that night we played to Texas Future, out of San Antonio. They were led by fellow Texas Ambassador Paul Garnica. This was a high scoring game and they were a hard playing team. They took us our of our offense early and made us play catch-up. Austin Burch kept us in the game with his dead-eye shooting. But we never could get over the 7 point hump. The Texas Future advanced.
Overall, it felt like a disappointing week, but as I told the boys Saturday night, anything but winning the tournament would have been disappointing. We played against high level teams and competed well. We just need to work better as a team and we will finish two of our three losses.
We now a few weeks off to rest and recover.
