Whiz Top C's: Walker 49!: Washington 110-Boston 108

[bcooper@imageconversion.com (Bill Cooper)]

This game had enough "stuff" in it to fill 2 normal size game
report (and I don't have time to do 1 good one this morning), so
if I leave "stuff" out, I hope others jump in and fill the gap.  The
Wizards were in command most of the way in this game, but the C's made
a very late charge, and actually had a chance to tie or win on the
last shot (which fell short).  I think for C's fans, that this is a bit
overshadowed by a breakout game  by Antoine Walker, who scored 49
points.  Walker simply carried the team for big chunks of this game, in
a way that very few others in the league could do.

	The Wiz started out the game with a lot of offensive energy,
and had the Celts in a defensive posture from the opening horn.  They
were pushing the ball up the court very quickly and getting a lot of
easy shots as they took leads of 13-6 and 19-14.  The Celts got one of
their period bursts of offensive efficiency and closed the gap to 26-25,
before a Tracy Murray 3 (some ominous undertones from the orchestra, 
here) put  Washington up by 29-25 at the end of the first.  Toine had
12 in the period, and was demonstating that none of the Whiz, could
hope to cover him.

	The C's, with Walker on the bench, started out the second quarter very
cold, scoring only one basket (a Dana Barros Alley Oop), in the
first 5:00, in which time the Whiz built a 42-29 lead.  Walker got into
the game and scored 8 in the period, but was unable to cut into the
Wiz lead, as they took a 53-42 lead into the halftime break.  The Whiz
did a very good job of picking on weak Celtic defensive matchups (Knight
vs. Webber, and Strickland vs. Brown), to build that lead.  Tracy
Murray,
was in foul trouble for much of the first half and was held to that
single three pointer at the end of the first quarter.

	Both teams were a little lackluster of offfense to start the 
3rd, though the Celts did start to go to the basket more.  Still,
halfway through the period, the score stood at 65-56.  In some 
rebounding action, Travis Knight and Terry Davis got tangled up and
Knight through the ball (weakly) at Davis.  Davis confronted Knight
and they got called for a double T.  For whatever reason, the Celts
started a 12-6 run at that point to pull to within 3 at 71-68.  Murray,
back into the game hit the first 2 of several big hoops to help the
Whiz rebuild their lead to 10 (82-72) at the end of the quarter.

	Things got worse early in the 4th, as Washington extended its 
lead to 92-76.  The Celts were stuck in quicksand, and the harder they
tried to get back into the game, the more mistakes and easy baskets 
they gave up.  Finally, the Celts stabalized offensively, and were able
to close the gap to 99-88, but there seemed to be no sign that they
could prevent the Whiz from scoring.  With about 2:30 to go in game,
Walker scored his 40th point on a three, that pulled the C's to within
10 at 103-93.  But with 1:30 to go, the Whiz were still up by 11 at 108
-97 and the cause seemed hopeless.  After Mercer hit 2 free throws,
Walker hit a 3, and then followed with a length of the court drive to 
pull the C's to within 4 (his 49th point of the night 108-104 :50 to
go). After  another misses Washington shot, Walker tried to go the
length
of the court again, but the Whiz trapped him, and Chris Whitney got
the ball away from him (perhaps symbolic of Walker's effort, as he
didn't even look for another teammate to help him).  Walker fouled
Whitney, picking up his 6th, and sending Whitney to the line to 
give the Whiz a 110-104 lead with just 39 seconds left.  The Celts
still weren't done though.  Billups was fouled in 3 point territory, 
and hit all 3 free throws to pull the C's to within 3 at 110-107 (10.1
left).  The Whiz called their last timeout to consider their options,
and then were unable to get the ball in anyway.  So they tried to call
another timeout (I didn't catch if it was Webber who called it or not), 
and the Celts got the ball and a free throw to make the score 110-108  
with 10.7 still on the clock.  The Celts set up a decent 3 point 
opportunity for Dana, but it fell short and the Whiz escaped with a win
110-108.

	This was a straightforward field goal differential game, as the
Whiz shot 39-66 (58%?) while the C's shot 38-86 (43.5%?: I can't find
the calculator on this PC).  The Whiz also tried 45 free throws to
the Celtics 32, but the C's made almost as many (28-26).  The Celts
compensated  for that big edge by getting a nice advantage on the 
offensive boards 14-6, and in turnovers 21-17.  They also shot
6-13 on 3s.

Lineups:
Celtics: Billups, Mercer, McCarty, Walker, Ellison
Whiz: Strickland, Cheaney, Howard, Webber, Davis

Players:
Walker, Walker, Walker: Toine certainly showed some amazing offensive
punch in this game, though you wouldn't want him to play this way on
a regular basis (maybe just in the 4th quarter).  He shot 21-36,
including 5-5 on threes (nearly all a big moments) for 49 points.  He
could certainly have broken 50 with better free throw shooting, as he 
was just 2-7.  He added 12 boards, but did not have an assist to set 
against his 5 turnovers.  The Whiz don't play very good help defense
and Toine took good advantage of this, by spinning of his posts and
dribbling right to the basket for layups.  His medium range jumper
was also working fairly well (Okay, everything except the free throw
shooting was pretty solid).  It'll be interesting to see if Toine
can get back to the triple double mentality (if he's had it this season
at all) after a gane like this.

Mercer: His jumper just wasn't going, and to Ron's credit he adjusted 
in the second half and made some nice drives to the basket, scoring
18 on 8-20 shooting.

Billups: Only scored 1 basket the whole night (1-10) but had a pretty
good game, nonetheless.  He was a perfect 11-11 from the free throw
line, had 6 assists, 5 steals and just one turnover.  And, per usual,
held the opposing point guard under pretty good check.

McCarty: His jump shot wasn't working and he didn't make the adjustment
that Mercer did.  Scored 6 points on 2-8 shooting, but did have 7
boards.

Ellison: got 17 minutes, scored 6 and had 2 boards.

Bowen: Only got 21 minutes as the offensive emergance of Mercer and
McCarty is making his minutes scarcer.   

Dana: Got 12 minutes, scored 6 and had 2 assists.  Pitino kept
Billups on the floor against Strickland.

DeClercq: 2 points and 6 boards in 15 minutes.

Thomas: Funny, I thought after the strong performance against the Bulls
we might see more of John.  In fact after, the first 3 center go their
2 fouls apiece, Pitino put Rogers into the game for 1 minute, and
then rushed Thomas into the game as though he had forgotten that John
was there.  But Thomas played 7 minutes and was back to his invisible
man act.

Knight: scored 2 points, but had to guard Webber and was easily
overwhelmed.

Brown: had the same problem with Strickland, who Bickerstaff snuck
into the game to play the 2.  Pitino had to get him out quick.

Roger: just had that 1 minute.

Coaching: Pitino abandoned the stategy that got the C's the late
defensive rush that won the game in Boston.  He played his 4 non-
center starters for a total of 177 minutes, and used his bench
relatively little.  So there were no fresh troops to bring off the bench
for that late defensive push.  And, really, with the exception of
Walker, he didn't get the offensive production to justify it.  The Whiz
and Bickstaff did a really good job of recognizing and taking advantage
of poor matchups, which  might have been part of the reason.

The Celts are now 16-16 on the season.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com