By Ben Spector
GREENBELT-During a game which wasn’t even the biggest contest in Prince George’s County on Tuesday evening, the Eleanor Roosevelt Raiders Boys Basketball team decided to put on a show that was worthy of the attention that all the other games across the county had received.
The Raiders sliced and diced their way up the court with a prolific offensive attack on their way to an easy 74-47 win over the Bladensburg Mustangs.
The Raiders were ranked as the #2 team in Prince George’s County and the #4 team in the Power 5 according to Maryland Sports Access own Power 5 rankings for January 10th but even with all the accolades that accompanied them the Raiders were not the hot ticket of the night as that honor fell to the match-up across the county between the Gwynn Park Yellow Jackets and the Frederick Douglass Eagles.
Still, Eleanor Roosevelt’s gym was close to capacity as the Raiders looked to make another case as to why they were one of the top teams in the county, taking on the Mustangs who had also garnered attention in the Power 5 rankings holding the #12 spot overall and #5 spot in Prince George’s County.
The Raiders would do just that as they would take the early lead and never look back, starting the game with a 7-0 run in the game’s first minute and 41 seconds forcing Bladensburg to take an early time-out.
The Raiders would sore from there as they would use a fast-paced offensive attack that is uncommon for the Raiders to put large quantities of points on the board, capitalizing on a fast break offense that helped crack a Bladensburg defense that had taken more of a back-seat to the Mustang prolific offense.
After their 7-0 run was broken by a Mustangs bucket the Raiders offense would get right back to it outscoring the Mustangs 15-13 in the rest of the 1st quarter to finish the 1st up by 9.
The Raiders dynamic offense was created throughout most of the contest in two simple and basic ways. The Raiders took a spellbinding approach to attacking the paint using an array of slick passes and smooth finishes punishing Bladensburg with high percentage shots and finding the open man almost anywhere in the paint. Then if the Mustangs couldn’t get anything inside they could just as easily kick it out to a bevy of shooters who seemed to be open all night from either just outside the arc or just inside it.
This included Gus Okafor who had 17, Victor Okafor who had 13, and Delascio Dancy who had 10 for the Raiders, with the team as a whole shooting 32-56 from the field good for just above 57% from the field. Even, with the high number of inside looks, the Raiders shooting percentage is still a good indication of how hot they truly were as they shot 50 % from outside the arc.
With the Raiders shooting as hot as they did Bladensburg would have needed a strong night of shooting to counter that and unfortunately they did not get it as the Mustangs shot 15 of 48 from the field including 5 for 19 from outside the arc leaving them struggling to find points from the outside with a tough Roosevelt defense headed by Naji Marshall keeping the Mustangs in check inside.
One bright spot for the Mustangs was the play of Prince Obike and Amin Sanya as Obike scored 12 points and Sanya scored 16 points for the Mustangs.
It wasn’t meant to be for the Mustangs as the Raiders easily won with a slam by Marshall late in the 4th quarter capping a game that was only seen by about 250 but was worthy of the attention of a whole lot more.
