Last year’s Public League boys championship game was all about Simeon’s Derrick Rose proving himself a great basketball player. This year’s was about Simeon, in Rose’s senior season, proving itself a great team.
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It was a rematch of the 2006 title game, but this time the details seemed to favor Washington, the underdog, which last year looked intimidated playing on the Bulls’ home floor at the United Center. A crowded events schedule at the UC pushed this year’s title game back to the UIC Pavilion, where it had flourished for much of the 80s and 90s, and Washington’s Minutemen seemed much more comfortable in the humbler setting last Saturday night, especially with attendance held down by the threat of a winter storm and by the televising of the game on Channel 26. Washington came in a hot team, having won 14 straight to go to 21-4. Simeon was 24-2, but the referees weren’t blinded by the Wolverines’ star quality. They hit forward Tim Flowers with a foul on the game’s first possession, though from my seat in the second row I clearly heard him slap all ball as he blocked a shot. Then they hit Rose with two fouls in the first quarter. He stayed in the game, but another foul in the second quarter sent him to the bench, and an offensive foul midway through the third quarter sent him back again. By then, however, the game was all but over. Simeon’s senior starters took their curtain calls in the fourth quarter, and at the end Rose was back on the floor with the ball in his hand, dropping it as time ran out with the dispatch of a workman putting down his tools at the stroke of five on a Friday.
Orange came to the fore–he would lead the team with 21 points–and having established his jumper tossed up an apparently bad shot that turned out to be a perfect alley-oop pass to Johnson flying down the base-line for a slam. “Oooooh!” went the crowd. Johnson returned the favor, dealing a lovely pass off the hip to Orange for a fast-break layin, and Orange soon added a three to make it 61-35. Having stormed down the lane for a crushing dunk, Johnson then hit a couple nice midrange jumpers and it was 67-41. He’d finish with 19 points and 9 assists. Rose returned with 5:45 left to shepherd the win home and add a little French pastry–something Washington, to save face, meant to deny him. Liggins fouled Rose on an apparent breakaway. “That’s like, ‘No show time,’” said a fan sitting in the front row. Then Rose drove the lane windmilling the ball but couldn’t finish. But backup senior guard Deon Butler put Simeon ahead 87-57 by hitting a three, as if to de-clare “no prisoners,” and Rose added the exclamation point. He passed to Butler on a give-and-go, Butler lofted a perfect alley-oop, and Rose’s dunk made the final score 89-57.
