Boys Basketball: Metea Valley holds off Neuqua Valley in overtime

Updated: February 1, 2012 9:51PM

Metea Valley boys basketball coach Bob Vozza knows that since the calendar has flipped to February, every remaining game for the Mustangs will feel like a playoff game.

Wednesday’s Upstate Eight Valley game against rival Neuqua Valley provided just that.

Metea led by 10 points going into the fourth quarter, only to see Neuqua come back to force overtime. Metea needed five late points from Milan Bojanic to finally fend off the Wildcats in a 71-67 win.

“From here on out, it’s going to be a playoff atmosphere in all of our games,” Vozza said. “We need people pitching in here and there. It’s been that way all year. We have different people step up, total team effort.”

The end of overtime, with the score tied at 66-66 after a Jabari Sandifer three-pointer for Neuqua, it was Bojanic’s turn to step up, scoring the final five points for Metea to finally put the pesky Wildcats (14-10, 5-5) away.

Ryan Solomon carried the Mustangs (20-1, 9-1) with three three-pointers in the second quarter, keeping the game tied at 29-29. He scored a team-high 21 points. In the third quarter, when Metea pushed the lead to as large as 11 points, Raysean Parker came off the bench to score six points in a crucial 9-0 run that seemingly put the Mustangs in position to run away with the game.

“In the third quarter, we played a lot better than we did in the first half,” Solomon said. “We tried to push the game out, try to not have it be such a close game, get a comfortable lead. (Neuqua) played really hard and made a lot of baskets and came back in the end.”

It was Sandifer that was the difference in the fourth. He scored a game-high 24 points, and prompted coach Todd Sutton to say that he “looked like a Division I player.”

Metea led 55-47 with about five minutes left in regulation. Sandifer then pushed the Wildcats back into the game. He scored only five points in the fourth, but he quick first step off the dribble proved to be nearly impossible to guard, helping his team close regulation out on a 12-4 run to force overtime.

He then drilled a three-pointer to start overtime, giving Neuqua its first lead since the final seconds of the first half, and hit another three that tied the game in overtime.

“Jabari made a lot of great plays,” Solomon said. “He really kept them in the game at the end. We did what we could, but he was better than our defense at that point.”

Neuqua could have won the game in regulation with some better free-throw shooting. The Wildcats hit only 4-of-11 in their 12-4 run at the end of regulation.

“He, we only missed 15,” Sutton joked about his team’s 14 of 29 shooting from the line in the game. “We are who we are. We’ve done it all year, and it’s not going to change overnight. It’s a problem.”

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