City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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There’s no good way to test the ‘clutch’ gene. No drill, no practice, no scrimmage situation can replicate the pressure or atmosphere of a real game, of a loud, hot gymnasium packed to the brim, of a late-game situation where a shot going in or out means the difference between a win or a loss, between elation or disappointment. 

When that time comes, you find out, and not a second beforehand. 

Archbishop Wood found out on Sunday that Jaylen Stinson certainly has it, in spades.

“I knew he had big, big (ones),” head coach John Mosco said. “He’s a warrior.”

The junior guard made the biggest play of the game for Wood not just once but three times –– a steal, a trey, a bucket –– as the Vikings overcame Roman Catholic 94-93 in a double-overtime classic at Wood’s packed gymnasium. 

Stinson finished with 25 points, including the biggest seven of the game for a Wood side did everything it could to stay unbeaten in Catholic League play.

In the final 20 seconds of regulation, with his team down two, Stinson came up with a steal, then calmly sank two foul shots with 9.9 seconds remaining to send the game to extra sessions. In overtime, his buzzer-beating 3-pointer extended the contest yet again. And after Roman took its final lead, in the last minute of the second extra session, it was Stinson again, cutting into the lane and making a jumper, delivering the final margin after a final Cahillite attempt clanked off the rim.

“We had people on the sideline telling us it was time to go –– my dad specifically, he’s always in my head in moments like this,” Stinson said, referring to his father Marvin Stinson, the head coach at Universal Audenried Charter. “I was built for this, basically.”

The loudest the gym got was for Stinson’s shot at the end of the first overtime, on a baseline out-of-bounds play that Mosco drew up in a timeout with 1.3 seconds left. The original look was for Rahsool Diggins, but Roman’s defense hung tight to Wood’s leading scorer, and Stinson found himself open in the corner, right in front of his bench.

Knowing he had a little time on the clock, Stinson took one dribble and a step to his left, then let fly, the buzzer going off well after the shot left his fingertips but well before the ball splashed through the hoop.

“We had to adjust because the way they were playing, the outside, they didn’t want us to hit any 3s, so I started from high, (down) low, and then just had to adjust when he closed out,” said Stinson, who has more than a dozen D-I offers from schools in the MAAC, CAA and similar leagues . “He jumped, one dribble, up.”

While Stinson supplied the game’s heroics, all five of Mosco’s Division I-bound junior starters had their say in the victory. 

Diggins, the 6-3 point guard ticketed for a high-major program in a couple years, dropped 28 points along with eight rebounds and three steals. Wing Daeshon Shepherd, who’s got a dozen offers from schools in the Atlantic 10 and some mid-major leagues, had 24 points, 12 rebounds, three blocks and three assists, hitting a key triple in the second extra session.

Marcus Randolph added 11 and Muneer Newton six to round out the scoring for Wood (13-3, 9-0), which was no stranger to extra sessions. Earlier this season, in the same gym, the Vikings took powerhouse Paul VI (Va.) to seven overtimes before losing by two. 

“It felt exactly like it,” Diggins said. “This time it didn’t go seven overtimes, it went to two, that’s the difference. And we won.”

“We didn’t want it to go to seven overtimes, we wanted to get it as short as possible,” Stinson said. “So once we got to the second (overtime), it was like ‘yo, we’ve got to finish this.’”

Wood’s had it’s share of close calls so far in Catholic League play, beating McDevitt by three back in December and O’Hara by four on the road earlier this month. There was also a win over Bonner which saw a massive first-half lead dwindle in the second, similar to how Roman closed a 14-point gap on Sunday, outscoring Wood 19-8 in the fourth quarter.

But Mosco noted it was a sign of growth for the junior-laden team that they’re learning how to battle back from adversity, going from a team that at the beginning of the year had only two seasons of varsity ball under their collective belts to actual upperclassmen by this point in the year. If the Vikings are to capture their second-ever PCL title, that’s a jump they need to make.

“This win meant everything because we’ve been working on everything, we’ve been preparing for this game, marked this game on our calendars,” Shepherd said. “We were just glad to come out with the ‘W,’ we worked hard for this, and I’m glad we all stuck together.”

Roman was fresh off an extended game of its own, a double-OT loss at Neumann-Goretti on Friday. The Cahillites (8-7, 4-3) got a monster performance from sophomore big man Jalen Duren (34 points, 18 rebounds), and another 32 (plus 10 rebounds) from sophomore guard Justice Williams, but head coach Matt Griffin was left lamenting 10 missed foul shots (23-of-33) at the end.

“We’re learning how to win games, we haven’t figured it out yet,” he said. “Every one of these games, coming down the stretch, are going to be one-possession games. And the margin for error is slim, so to miss double-digit free-throws in both games, is a backbreaker. But to be in the game, I think, still says a lot.”

Though the Cahillites have garnered a lot of attention for the presence of Duren –– the No. 2 player in the class of 2022 and just about the closest thing to a surefire pro prospect that you can get as a high school sophomore –– it’s still a young team. 

Griffin starts two sophomores in Duren and Williams and two freshmen in Xzayvier Brown (8 points/11 rebounds) and Will Norman, along with senior guard Lynn Greer III (16 points/7 rebounds/4 assists). Sophomore reserve forward Christian Kirkland played a key defensive role in the second half, allowing Roman to catch up during third and fourth quarters, but there isn’t a ton of depth on the roster, either.

“It’s obviously tough to win these types of games with a youthful team; however, we feel like we’re in these games, and we’re right there,” Griffin said. “One of the things they learn is that life is hard, basketball is hard, you don’t win every game.”

Roman returns home on Friday for a game against Archbishop Carroll (10-4, 5-2) in a game that could go a long way towards determining the final PCL seedings. Only the top four seeds secure home games in the quarterfinals, and there are six two-loss teams now sitting ahead of the Cahillites.

Wood, meanwhile, will move on to play arguably the biggest game of the Catholic League regular season, traveling down to fellow unbeaten Neumann-Goretti (13-2, 7-0) on Friday night. It’s always a meaningful game for Mosco, a longtime Saints assistant under Carl Arrigale before he took the Vikings job in 2013, but the top seed in the PCL and some major bragging rights will be on the line between two programs stocked with talent and toughness.

“(This win) means a lot, but then again it means nothing,” Stinson said. “It’s a regular-season game and you’ve just got to move onto the next game. We play Neumann-Goretti, we’ve got to focus on them now.”

By Quarter:
Roman:   18 | 16  | 21 | 19  | 11 | 8 |  93

Wood:     18 | 27 |  21 | 8 | 11  | 9 | 94

Shooting:
Roman: 34-79 FG, 2-14 3PT, 23-33 FT

Wood: 32-81 FG, 12-30 3PT, 18-25 FT

Scoring:
Roman: Duren 34, Williams 32, Green 16, Brown 8, Lett 3

Wood: Diggins 28, Stinson 25, Shepherd Randolph 11, Newton 6