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Wildcats' Manora Has Hot Hand

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By CRISTINA LEDRA, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 8, 2008

WESLEY CHAPEL - Wesley Chapel's Ladarius Manora can hurt you from anywhere on the court, and as some teams have learned this season, when he gets hot, he can hurt you from everywhere.

Manora, in his senior season with the Wildcats (19-6), has become the big-time scorer they needed him to be.

His average of 16.5 points per game is second on the team behind Greg Jenkins (17.7 ppg), but in one of the most critical games for Wesley Chapel this season, he had his biggest game.

In the Wildcats' second meeting of the season with Land O' Lakes, Manora was a can't-miss shooter. He scored 32 points, including the buzzer-beater in a one-point win, despite an injured ankle he had sprained the previous day.

As the teams prepare to meet for the third time in the Class 5A-District 7 semifinals tonight at Ridgewood, there is no telling what could happen.

"It's going to be a different game," Manora said. "It's not going to be anything like the other two. It's going to be buzzer to buzzer. All I know is that we're going to play as hard as we can. Each time, it's so different, the game feels so different. The first time it was a blowout in Land O' Lakes' favor. The second time we won by one, so you can never judge by that."

The one thing both teams can count on is Manora will be a major scoring threat.

"I've had him on the point a little, so he's been passing more - he can score a bunch but he leads our team in assists with 77," Wesley Chapel coach Doug Greseth said. "He can shoot the 3, he can take the pass, he can hit the medium-range shot. He's a real good free-throw shooter."

Free throws might be considered Manora's specialty. He is close to an 80 percent this season and for his career for the line. He was 9-for-9 from the line in the second meeting against Land O' Lakes, and he has been perfect from the line six times this season.

"I love shooting free throws," Manora said. "That's the easiest part of basketball to me."
Manora can afford to feel good about his senior season now that he has been scoring consistently. But that wasn't the case when the season was getting started.

"I started off the season with only seven- or eight-point games, then after that things kind of picked up. But I was frustrated after the first few games, so I had to pick myself up," Manora said. "The first game, I was trying to do too much, but once I calmed down and started playing basketball again, everything fell into place."
Manora started to really develop as a shooter his junior season, and he said he improved during the summer by playing AAU basketball.

But he won't be the only important element if the Wildcats hope to advance to the district final.

"I think the key to this game is going to be who defends better and who rebounds better," Greseth said. "The Gators have a lot of offensive weapons. I think we need to be patient and do a good job defensively."

The Wildcats ended the season on a sour note, losing to Pasco by a point.

"We've had a hard time understanding what to do with a lead," Greseth said. "We had a good lead against Hudson, then we did some things that weren't so smart, and we had a big lead against Pasco, and that coupled with the fact that we didn't make free throws at the end led to the loss. We're working on that and our late-game situations."

All of that should come in handy against Land O' Lakes.

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