Fouls Don’t Fail L. A. Baptist, 56-52

No one can accuse L. A. Baptist High Coach Maury Neville of being an optimist.

Tuesday night, before the Knights’ 56-52 Alpha League victory over Marshall Fundamental, Neville was predicting a rout--in Marshall’s favor.

“It would not surprise me a bit to see us get beat real bad tonight,” Neville said.

It wasn’t exactly the normal attitude for a coach in charge of a 9-1 basketball team. Maybe Neville mistakenly thought that he was at the helm of his opponent, which couldn’t keep itself from fouling everyone but the person taking tickets at the door.

The Knights went to the free throw line 31 times, making 22. That proved to be the difference in the game.

Senior forward Robert Dodson paced L. A. Baptist with 16 points. Forward Paul Luedke added 11 points and 11 rebounds, while point guard Gary Kim also scored 11.

The Eagles (5-4 overall, 0-1 in the Alpha League) enjoyed their first and last lead after making the first basket of the game.

The Knights (10-1, 2-0) led, 12-10, at the end of a virtually even first quarter, but opened things up in the second period to take a 28-18 advantage into intermission.

By midway through the fourth quarter, L. A. Baptist had increased its margin to 19 points, 53-34, and appeared to have the game on ice. The only problem were the Knights’ shooting hands, which also must have been on ice.

Led by senior forward Corey Dantzler, who scored 22 points and had 11 rebounds, Marshall went on a 16-4 run to close to within 56-52 before running out of time.

Neville wasn’t satisfied with the victory.

“Don’t get me wrong. We’ll take the win,” he said. “But we broke down a lot offensively at the end. That wasn’t a typical L. A. Baptist quarter right there.”