Team Tulsa EEEKS out Two Point Overtime Win over Celtics

Tulsa Celtics
The seven Celtics battled the much larger Team Tulsa for forty one minutes before falling 48-46 on a put back basket with 4 1/2 seconds left in the overtime. Brian Bensons 3/4 of the court last second shot fell just short.

Turnovers and allowing too many offensive rebounds were the key factors in the loss. We probably had 15 turnovers and they probably had 20-24 points on stickbacks after crashing the offensive boards.

Brian Benson had 5 three pointers and Brock Morton added 3 more to help the CELTICS battle back from several 8 point deficits. We actually had the lead in the last two minutes but failed to control the ball at crucial times. Chris Collins played his first game as a Celtic and filled the large void as Jarred Wise is busy this weekend playing in a baseball tournament.

We pressed quite a bit in the first half and had modest success but relied on a 2-1-2 zone exclusively in the 2nd half; focusing on blocking out and trying to limit TeamTulsa's offensive rebounding.

Corey Shannon played large as he was forced to battle inside throughout the game; Matt Maguire, Kale Larkin & Alan Santos all had highlight moments as all seven Celtics truly battled hard on the defensive end. If we had not, we would have lost by 20 or more points.

Yours truly, in hindsight, should have used another timeout with a minute left and the game tied at 44 to set up a last possession play. Instead, we turned the ball over and they scored. Brian Benson up faked and took it to the hole with about 8 seconds left to tie the game. We withstood three shots in the last 8 seconds to send the game into overtime.

Future Oklahoma High School Hall of Fame Coach Nate Harris watched the game. Also present was Waymon Tisdale's brother William who spoke to me after the game. He was quite impressed with how we were able to play TeamTulsa even. He said they never did figure out all of our picking, which typically occurred from our Oklahoma and Celtic plays, along with our motion offense.

The CELTICS have nothing to be ashamed of, but personally, I sure hate losing. We play tomorrow afternoon at 4:10 pm at the ORU aerobic center.