Norcross boys pull away from Osborne with a second half surge

NORCROSS, GEORGIA – Facing a talented Osborne team, the defending state champion Norcross Blue Devils were locked in a back-and-forth battle, entering the half up five points.

The game was close.

That is, until Amari Jordan decided he didn’t want it to be close anymore.

The UGA-commit took over after halftime, scoring 16 points in the third quarter to single handedly outscore the opposing Cardinals and give his team the separation needed to advance to the Elite Eight with a 72-60 victory.

For head coach Jesse McMillan, it was a tale of two halves.

“Osborne played with a lot of energy and a lot of fire,” McMillan said. “They’ve played good basketball, they played Wheeler three times, they played Grayson. They’ve seen really good teams and they’ve competed. I felt like the first half was a game on both ends where we’re trying to feel each other out and see what works and what doesn’t.”

After dominating from beyond the arc in their first round game, McMillan said he had to caution his team not to expect that kind of performance every time out.

“You have to kind of explain to your kids, ‘look, we have confidence in your ability to shoot, but making that many threes in the first half is not something that’s going to happen routinely,’” he said. “We came out early and settled for a couple of those early jumpers.”

However, once Norcross found its rhythm, the Blue Devils started to pull away. 

“It was a game of adjustments at halftime,” McMillan said. “We talked about a couple of things offensively and defensively, one primarily was making sure that we got one of the best players in the state the basketball in spots that he’s really good at.”

Which is exactly what happened, as Jordan scored 16, especially killing the Cardinals with his fadeaway midrange shot, to counter 11 points from the entire team of Osborne combined for the third quarter. Jordan finished with 36 including four threes, most notably, the one that put one final nail in the long-sealed coffin to give Norcross its final three points of the night. McMillan explained part of what makes Jordan such a special talent.

“Mari is obviously a very special and talented player, but he’s unique in the fact that he doesn’t need the ball every time to be effective,” McMillan said. “He’s not a kid that dominates the basketball. His shots and his moves are quick, one or two dribbles and he gets to his spots. That helps you a lot because you can put him in some simple actions where you can move him around and get him to his spots and when he heats up, he stays hot for a while. With some other talented players, a lot of times they’ll over-dribble some or dominate the basketball and from a defensive standpoint, those are kind of easier to guard because you can put two or three guys on them if they don’t pass the ball as well.”

Jordan’s takeover really became the difference in the game, not only in the points scored, but tactically as well. With Osborne sitting in a 2-3 zone, Jordan went to work, burying the Cardinals in the areas where the zones overlapped, exploiting the lapses in coverage. Eventually, this forced Osborne back into a man-to-man defense, which is right where McMillan wanted them.

“They were sitting in a 2-3 zone and it kind of opened it up and got them back to man where we felt like we had a couple different advantages,” he said.

From there, Jordan’s off-ball style, combined with the man-to-man mismatches allowed everyone to get involved for a high-scoring final quarter that saw Norcross pull away in the end.

With the emphasis on trying to slow down Jordan in the forth, to little avail as the future Bulldog had 11 in the final quarter to finish off his special night, both Samarion Bond and Toby Ojukwu began to flourish. Ojukwu had all seven of his points in the fourth quarter while Bond finished off a 16-point performance with six points in the final frame. 

Bond’s hustle, energy and emotion that’s on full display with each bounce of the ball is something that McMillan says is becoming a crucial role in the Blue Devils’ tournament run.

“I was impressed with how Samarion played tonight because he’s a kid that’s obviously really talented offensively, but he’s bought in the last couple of games into really understanding the value of defense and hustle plays and making extra possessions,” McMillan said. “He really did a great job defensively and grabbed some key rebounds when things weren’t really falling for us offensively. I was really proud of how he kept his head, played through a physical game and made a lot of winning plays late.”

One of those winning plays caused the House of Blue to erupt late in the game as Bond took a turnover on for a massive fast break dunk that proved to be the dagger. Now, McMillan and his squad move on to face Newton in an Elite Eight matchup that could go a long way in deciding who’s left standing at the end of the tournament. 

Armed with the experience of players that made the long journey to a state title last year, McMillan feels ready for the fight.

“We have two guys that started last year on a state championship team and went through that run and then we have a lot of guys that were involved in the program,” he said. “They may have not started or played much, but they’ve been through these late season practices and how you have to be focused. It’s going to be a war when we play Newton, just like every game will be in the Elite Eight, but we’ve got guys that will fight and guys that will compete. They believe in themselves and they believe in their teammates and that’s normally a recipe for some good basketball and often a recipe for success.”