One of the first preposterous basketball games of the young season unfolded at a California tournament on Saturday, where it took five overtimes to separate two top-ranked teams from the Los Angeles area.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Daily News, the girls basketball teams from Oak Park (Calif.) High and St. Bonaventure (Calif.) High played through five overtime periods in the championship game of the Bishop Diego girls basketball tournament on Saturday night. While the game was scheduled to wrap up early in the evening, it eventually ended much later than expected, with Oak Park emerging as tournament champions with a 98-90 win.
Those 188 combined points also earned a spot in the California state record book, marking the game as third highest for total points in state girls basketball history.
St. Bonaventure star McKenna Hill led all scorers with 31 points, a total which was more than some teams at the tournament scored in full games. Kelsey Haines added 28 points for Oak Park while her teammate, Sarah Bucknovitz, registered a double-double of 25 points and 13 rebounds and also added five blocks.
The string of overtime periods started when Oak Park guard Leah Greenberg hit a game-tying 3-pointer with 14 seconds remaining in regulation. That shot and Oak Park's subsequent defensive stand sent the game into the first overtime, but it wasn't until Oak Park re-doubled its defensive efforts in the fifth extra period that it finally walked away with a victory; St. Bonaventure was held scoreless in the final period.
While the game may only have earned the No. 3 spot in the state record books, the five extra periods did match the longest girls basketball game in California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section history.
Now both teams can look forward to their regular season … when they'll match up two more times and, for both their sakes, hope to close out games one way or the other in slightly fewer than five extra frames.
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