Silver Bandits sneak past San Diego, 84-80

Victoria Sun

Monday, March 20, 2000 | 9:44 a.m.

Despite holding the International Basketball League's worst record, the San Diego StingRays gave the Las Vegas Silver Bandits a scare on Sunday night -- which was no surprise to Silver Bandits head coach Rolland Todd.

Las Vegas played without the league's leading rebounder, Rocky Walls, and got hammered on the boards, but outhustled the StingRays for a team-record 20 steals. That was good enough for an 84-80 victory before an estimated 1,500 at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Although the Silver Bandits (28-20) now lead the season series against the StingRays (10-33) 6-2, the teams have played three overtime games.

"They're not a bad team," Todd said. "They've done a lot of things to help their team and now they've had a few weeks to play with each other.

"They're going to go out and beat some teams. We just didn't want to be one of them." Marcus Liberty started in place of Walls, who sat out with a hip injury, and scored 11 of his team-high 17 points in the fourth quarter. Eric Schraeder and Isaac Burton each scored 15.

Las Vegas' Harold Ellis was instrumental in the victory by grabbing one of his seven steals on a controversial play in the game's closing seconds.

The StingRays retained possession of the ball and trailed 83-80 with 3.3 seconds left on the clock after failed 3-point attempts by Saddi Washington and Randy Duck.

On the next inbounds play, Ellis swiped the ball and cradled it to his body looking like he was calling for a timeout, which caused the timekeeper to stop the clock at 2.7 seconds. The San Diego bench was livid, contending that Ellis was out of bounds when he grabbed the ball.

Instead of a turnover being called on Ellis, a Silver Bandit timeout was granted. After Las Vegas' J.R. Henderson caught the ball for the last possession, he was fouled, then made one of two free throws for the final point of the game.

"I thought we did enough to win," San Diego coach Jeff Malone said. "I don't like to talk about the officials, but they blew that one."