McDonald finishes perfect again

By Tom Williams | February 27, 2011 at 12:04a.m.

MCDONALD

Forty seconds before the McDonald High boys basketball team completed its third-straight perfect regular season, the students broke out into the chant they’d been holding back for longer than anticipated: “Un-de-feat-ed.”

In their grittiest win of the season, the Blue Devils on Saturday afternoon held off a pesky Southern squad for a 57-49 victory to cap another 20-0, 14-0 Inter Tri-County League Tier two season.

This victory wasn’t as easy as the previous 19. After losing their first game by 30 points, the Indians (17-3, 11-3) trailed 52-49 after Trey Griffith capped a steal with a lay-up.

Riding to the rescue were the Rota twins — Justin and Nick — who each scored 13 points to finish their varsity starting careers with a 60-0 record in the regular season.

In the final two minutes, each Rota made steals and lay-ups to seal the victory.

“I’ve been coaching for 12 years and there’s nobody I’ve ever coached with more guts than the Rotas,” Rasile said. “You know they are going to make plays. Crunch time, three-point lead, they made plays.”

As freshmen, the Rotas were starters on a 20-0 junior-varsity squad.

“These are kids who are 80-0 in the regular season,” Rasile said. “That’s amazing, absolutely amazing.”

Because almost all of the Blue Devils’ wins were blowouts, Justin Rota admitted the Blue Devils benefitted from this close call.

“This one gets us ready for the tournament,” Rota said. “This season was the toughest I went through.”

Rota said the difference was how the Indians “threw the ball more through our press, not so much dribbling. At the beginning of the game, we really weren’t moving well on our press and that really hurt us.”

With the Blue Devils ahead 48-38 early in the fourth quarter, Southern’s Eric Baker and Jake Boyle hit back-to-back 3-pointers to throw a scare into the Blue Devils.

“It was tight, they hit those 3s and it changed the complexion of the game,” Rasile said. “We’re not 30 points better than them and we know that. In the first game, [mistakes] just snowballed on them.”

With 90 seconds to go, Indians point guard Brett Hunt carried the ball into McDonald’s zone. Nick Rota knocked the ball loose to his brother and scored an easy lay-up. A few moments later, Nick Rota had the ball again for another easy score. “It was a really big point is the game, they had some momentum,” Nick Rota said. “People make big shots and they made two of them. We work as hard as we can and it pays off.”

Kenny Ross also scored 13 points for McDonlad. For the Indians, Baker led with 18 and Boyle netted 14.

Asked which brother is the better player, Nick was diplomatic.

“I don’t know, we’re better at different things,” he said. “He’s our dribbler, can handle the ball and gets us the ball when we need it. He’s probably one of the hardest workers I’ve seen at the game of basketball.”

McDonald has won 63 straight regular season games.

“It’s great,” Nick Rota said. “We just don’t accept losing.”

Rasile told his players to enjoy the win then be ready to move on.

“It all starts new right now,” he said. “A 20-0 record doesn’t get us a 10-point lead in a district game. We’ve still got to start from scratch and take care of business.”