Boys’ basketball: English is Trojans’ buzzer-beater

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Bruce English will play back the final second of Thursday night’s Division 5AA championship game over and over in his mind for years to come. Fortunately, it will be a moment he will cherish, not regret.

English made a 15-foot corner jump shot at the buzzer to stun Windward and lift La Verne Lutheran to a thrilling 62-61 upset, exorcising the demons from last year’s 72-62 loss to Windward on the same court.
The winning shot was anything but a swish--the ball hit the rim, bounced out of the cylinder, then hung on the rim for what must have seemed like an eternity before falling through the net as the buzzer sounded. English, though, couldn’t care less how his shot looked on the way up--only that it went down.
‘I had faith that it would go in--that’s my shot,’ said the 6-1 junior guard, who finished with 15 points--the first 13 of which will be mostly forgotten by morning. ‘They [Windward] did a good job of stopping C.J. Cooper’s penetration but it left me open and I just let it go.’

Windward left the door open a crack when freshman point guard Jordan Wilson was fouled but missed the front end of a one-and-one situation, allowing Lutheran to take possession down by only one point. Lutheran capitalized on its good fortune when Cooper was fouled and calmly sank both free throws, giving the Trojans a 60-59 lead with 24.4 seconds left.

‘I had a feeling if he missed that free throw we would win,’ English said. ‘Everyone will be focusing on my shot but the truth is this was a total team effort. We needed everybody to get this done.’

Windward answered right back on Wesley Saunders’ driving layup with 6.6 seconds left, but the officials huddled and put an additional sixth-tenths of a second back on the clock, leaving Lutheran 7.2 ticks to get off one final shot.

It turned out to be just enough time for English to save the day... and a memory that will last a lifetime.

-- Steve Galluzzo