Defending champs extended to OT

Nick Christensen

Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2005 | 9:28 a.m.

It's been no secret lately -- teams that can control P'Allen Stinnett have a pretty good shot at beating the Palo Verde boys basketball team.

On Tuesday night, Western tried that tactic and came up two points short, as Palo Verde got an 80-78 overtime win.

In two of the three losses during the Panthers' recent slump, Stinnett was held under 20 points as opponents have dared the rest of the defending state champions' roster to beat them.

So when the fourth quarter started Tuesday in the Sunset Region quarterfinals at Palo Verde, it couldn't have come as too much of a surprise to see Southwest fourth-seed Western leading 51-46.

Stinnett had just 12 points after the first three quarters, and teammate Lucas Gums had 10 more as the Panthers looked headed for an early playoff exit.

Although the fourth quarter became P'Allen Time, with Stinnett scoring 13 of the Panthers' 21 points, he still didn't have enough alone to take it himself.

Enter Gums, who had seven of his 17 points in overtime -- including the go-ahead 3-pointer with 1:43 to play -- to carry Palo Verde to a Sunset Region semifinal berth against Centennial on Thursday.

"It's good for us," Stinnett said. "They keep putting two or three men on me, there's always someone on our team open. We need guys to step it up and take shots."

There were plenty of shots taken early in the game, as the teams played an up-and-down game for most of the first half.

"Western has tremendous quickness; that was a bit of an issue tonight," Panthers coach Paul Aznarez said. "We needed the team to stay in front -- this wasn't an easy matchup at all."

The pace slowed considerably in the third quarter, as Western outscored Palo Verde 15-8 and looked to be closing in on the upset.

"The one thing we tried to do was make the game up-tempo," Warriors coach Chancellor Davis said. "We felt that was to our advantage. A couple of possessions didn't go our way, and we lost by two points."

Western also played the last 31.3 seconds of Tuesday's game without guard Jovan McIver, who fouled out on a tough blocking call as Palo Verde tried to bring the ball upcourt ahead 76-75. McIver led Western with 21 points.

Teammate Edward Harris, whose shot with 2.2 seconds left in the fourth quarter sent the game to overtime, fouled out 17 seconds later, giving Stinnett two more free throws that would be the final of his 31 points and the last of Palo Verde's 80.

"That game could have gone either way," Aznarez said. "We live to fight on another day. ... We've got to seize the moment now. Somebody is going to get upset along the way... we have to try and make sure it's not us. It could have been."