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Anders Takes Victory No. 500

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By CRISTINA LEDRA, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 19, 2008

LAND O' LAKES - There was a mental duel being staged with timeouts with 3.5 seconds left in the deadlocked Ridgewood-Land O' Lakes boys basketball game Friday night.

Then the ball was inbounded to the Rams' Alvin Satram, who kept working until he was open to take the game-tying jump shot to send the game to overtime. That gave Ridgewood a spark that lasted through overtime to beat Land O' Lakes 70-66, giving Rams coach Gary Anders his 500th career win.

"We've had defensive breakdowns and we had another one tonight," Land O' Lakes coach Dave Puhalski said. "With two in the corner, you figure you can play defense for 3.5 seconds but that didn't happen and it went into overtime, we turned the ball over. It's just gut-wrenching. We've had five losses by 11 points total."

Anders took back-to-back timeouts with 3.5 seconds left when the Rams were down 61-59, then Puhalski called one.

"We had Luke Poderis come down and set a screen for me and I came up to the top and if I was open, I would get the ball and shoot it but that didn't work out and we had Luke come up to the rim and that didn't work out," Satram said. "We got the ball inbounded and I had a shot so I took it."

Land O' Lakes big man Mike Espinosa fouled out a minute into the four-minute overtime and Ridgewood was 4-for-6 from the line with about 30 seconds remaining to seal the win.

Ridgewood led for the most of the game by a couple of baskets but with 6:42 remaining in the fourth quarter, Ridgewood was called for a foul with a technical tacked on and Kevin Burnell sank all four free throws to give Land O' Lakes a 46-45 lead.

That play also gave Mike Lawrence and Derrick Zio, both Ridgewood starters, four fouls each. Neither ended up fouling out.

"It was tough," Lawrence said. "I couldn't really play aggressive on defense. I had to lay off but we pulled through. Freshman year I would have fouled out but I've grown up."

Following the game, Puhalski took the microphone from the Land O' Lakes announcer and addressed the raucous crowd that got more than its money's worth, congratulating Anders on win No. 500.

"We've talked about it obviously but it didn't mean much more until Dave did what he did and it chokes me up," Anders said of his old friend, who presented him with the game ball. "That was a classy move on his part. He's a good one."

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