KISSIMMEE, Fla. – When Long Island Lightning-Dingle was rolling through its pool without a problem, looking like it could possibly reach the final day at the AAU Super Showcase, Dana Dingle said what everybody was thinking.
His club could return home with a national championship – but only if it played its best the entire way through. It did for three quarters Tuesday morning in the gold quarterfinals. Four complete quarters, however, were needed against loaded Team Takeover from Washington, D.C.
As a result, the Lightning is headed home after a disappointing 69-61 loss to the nationally ranked powerhouse at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports. Lightning-Dingle raced out to leads of 21-12 and 26-16 and it was up by two headed into the fourth quarter.
But those final eight minutes were its undoing, the New York City club managing just 11 points in the final frame and six over the first seven minutes of the quarter. Team Takeover, meanwhile, outrebounded the Lightning, overwhelmed them in the paint and got easy baskets off miscues as it pulled away late.
“They just played harder than us the last four minutes,” said St. Raymond’s Daniel Dingle, who was held to eight points. “It was lack of execution. The first there quarters we were playing as a team, [the] last quarter we fell apart.”
Kamari Murphy led the Lightning with 18 points and Kedar Edwards added 14. Highly recruited point guard James Robinson, who lists Pittsburgh, Miami, Notre Dame, Virginia, and UCLA, led Team Takeover with 19 points; rugged Jerami Grant, Scout.com’s seventh-ranked small forward in the Class of 2012, added 15; and Beejay Anya, Grant’s teammate from DeMatha Catholic, followed with 10.
The Lightning’s woes early in pool play – turnovers – came back to haunt them in the fourth quarter, stifling a late rally. Down nine at one point, they got within five in the final two minutes, but turnovers by guards Naiel Smith and Sheldon Hagigal were too much to overcome.
“To win a championship you have to execute,” Dana Dingle said. “They executed down the stretch and we didn’t. I felt we were as good as any team in this tournament on both ends of the floor – and a lot of people agree with me – but in the end it comes down to execution.”