City League Freshman Championship

Taft celebrates their title. 

The freshman league championship game of the Cincinnati Metro Athletic Conference had a familiar result, Taft won. In a game that changed hands several times in the last few seconds of regulation and overtime the Senators had just enough in the tank to get it done:

Taft 57 Withrow 55: Tamarik Washington's layup in traffic with 4 seconds left broke the tie in overtime to give Taft the title. Demetrius Gooch had just hit consecutive three balls with one minute left to put Withrow up by four, but two buckets by Washington and one layup from Marcus Scott were enough for Taft to claim a two point victory. Similar to the style of their varsity team it was a team scoring effort by Taft. Marcus Scott led the way with 15 points followed by Kenny Kauffman's 11. Tamarik Washington, Robert Smith, DeAndre Smith, and Devon Matthews all added a couple of buckets a piece in the win. Withrow got 10 points a piece from big man Landen Jackson, who shows a lot of promise down the road, and wing Malik Blaine. Demetrius Gooch was the game's high scorer with 21 points. Gooch single handedly kept Withrow in the game by doing all of the ball-handling and hitting several big three pointers and floaters in the lane. This game was destined to be close as these two teams split the regular season matchups, Taft's only loss, and both advanced relatively easily to the championship game. As always in the city league there was no shortage of talent as this game featured 4 of CPHR's ranked players in the '14 class (as well as an additional 5 honorable mention players).