BY GREG SELBER

MCALLEN – The third quarter was nearing the end, and he’d dribbled too long, getting sandwiched by a nasty double team with the buzzer sounding before he could launch a shot.

OK, that’s it, just about the only thing J.J. Avila didn’t do perfectly Friday night, in a dominant 61-44 win his McAllen High Bulldogs pinned on the crosstown rival Memorial Mustangs. He was simply amazing, was the 6-foot-6 senior, with 26 points, 19 rebounds, seven assists, five blocks, four steals, all wrapped in a bundle of highlights to keep the huge crowd buzzing like bees all night.

A few people might complain that he’s overrated, which is hard to argue considering he averages 21 points and 10 boards a night. He’s passive, they may claim, but that’s tough to defend when one notes that he leads the team with 44 blocks and is among the top performers in steals, too.

The fact is, the dude can Hella play, and in a huge early 31-5A collision on the road against a foe thinking upset, Avila was the king of the hill, a truly unstoppable force from the opening tip.

Now for some of the highlights. Got a minute?

Memorial came in 4-0 in league play under Coach Sam Cortez, who’s got an athletic bunch with size and speed. The Mustangs were also liking their chances due to the unfortunate news emanating from the McHigh camp this week.

And the rumor became reality when speedy senior Nevin Franks appeared on crutches. Averaging 10 points and five assists per game this year, the explosive guard’s high school career has finished after a knee injury suffered against La Joya Tuesday. Avila came to the dance wearing a plastic facemask, a la Rip Hamilton, courtesy of a broken nose sustained against that same feisty Coyote clan. In all, given Memorial’s steady rise to the top of the heap this year and The Mac’s recent disasters, the situation may have seemed ripe for a surprise.

NO CHANCE…none. With a madcap overflow crowd ringing all four sides of the court and student sections from both schools keeping up a steady and hilarious drumbeat of competition against one another, Avila started the night with a tough turnaround jumper against two for the initial points of the game. He would not stop starring for 32 minutes.

OF OOHS AND AHS

With Franks done, the chore at the point fell to a senior, Jose Pompa, who is more used to firing away from the 2 guard. He stepped in to the action Friday and produced a steady floor game and a three-pointer early on, as McAllen served notice that problems or not, the thing was on.

With Avila scoring nine in the first and keying a severe defensive rush by McHigh, it was all but decided in the beginning. Ryan Evans, the 6-6 senior who sometimes gets the short end of the stick in terms of accolades, drove to the tin for a three-point play as Avila drew a pair of defenders. Evans gets 13 and eight a night with fluid footwork and the skills to finish.

Memorial, however, was seriously rattled from the opening tap, throwing bad passes and turning it over as Avila leapt out of the post to guard anyone who approached. Sometimes he is such a smart passing player that one forgets he’s scored 30 points five times this season. Avila is also a super defender with a sure feel for positioning and quick timing on the leap for a block. He seldom swats the ball out of bounds, usually retaining possession to start the break.

And the break? More often than not, he’s the one leading it!

As The Mac proceeded to blow Memorial out in every way possible, Avila showed his passing skills by pitching out of a jam to a wide-open Julio Oyervides, who nailed the three for a 22-10 lead at 5:07 of the second.

Meanwhile, the Bulldogs had held Memorial without a field goal in the first period, as the Mustangs just could not settle down.

Late in the second, Avila was on the highlight show again, with two tremendous passes. The first came on a touch-look to fellow post David Atkinson; after receiving a quick feed he finger-tipped the ball without looking to the open Atkinson for a 26-14 advantage at 1:50. Beautiful.

Next, Avila took a dribble 15 feet from the goal and on the bounce lasered a rocket to Evans underneath. He sees the floor and the play before anyone else and can do something about it, with long arms, excellent anticipation, and the courage to try the tough look. When J.J. goes to college (sounds like a movie title) those perimeter skills will come in handy in the switch from paint to wing. For a high school kid, the overall package he has is, well, it’s not fair, brother!

It was simply a clinic from the word go, and Coach Roy Swift could definitely use the pick-me-up. Though his team came in at 19-4, it has been a rotten week. Along with the injuries, Swift has had to weather the death of a close friend from his UTPA days. The funeral for Wilbur King was Friday and the normally intense Swift was feeling the pain.

“It’s been hard for me to keep it all together, I tell you,” he sighed. “But the guys were ready to play tonight, I think they wanted to show people what we have, even without Nevin. I told them that the Old Man was kind of out of it, so they were going to have to do their thing.”

McHigh was definitely given a lift by the return of The Nick. Football hero Nick Garza, a big part of the team’s race to the regional tournament last season, was hurt toward the end of the grid season and decided to sit out the hoops year. With track coming this spring and a football scholarship waiting for him with the brand-new University of Texas-San Antonio program in the fall, no one had blamed Garza for the decision.

But like Superman busting out of the phone booth, there was the muscled 6-2 senior in uniform for the ball game. Though he’s been back less than a week, Garza paid dividends against Memorial with 12 points and some fired-up hustle plays.

He and Avila teamed up a few times, once on a run-out in the third where Garza sprinted downcourt shedding Mustangs like flies. He arced a perfect lob to the churning Avila filling the lane, and the latter soared for a swooping lay.

Memorial got 10 points and some flying exploits from mop-headed soph Jacob Garza, who employed the fantastic form that has made him a 6-10 high jumper for a couple of dazzling drives. But the Mustangs never recovered from the early blitz, enduring a steady stream of more dazzling plays from Avila in the vain attempt to come back.

At one point, Avila rose for a defensive board against two, realized in midair that he could not corral it with both hands, so smartly tipped the ball over the head of one foe before grabbing it in front of the other. Then he took off, coast to coast with a behind-the-back dribble, finishing the stunning sequence in the rafters with a scoop shot for a 33-16 lead.

Overrated. Whatever.

Later, the McHigh legend pinned Garza’s stuff with a grunt, and it was 39-22 after three.

The Mustangs are going to be heard from down the road, with a bunch of good kids including sophomore Niko Maxwell, a burly leaper who had eight points Friday; the best is yet to come from this well-regarded soph. Outstanding shooter Joel Renteria had an off night against the Bulldogs, but he and Sameer Wadhwani have been solid all year. This was just not their night, with the Bulldogs feeling like wounded tigers and intent on putting a dynamite performance on the board. Backs against the wall, they responded with a knockout.

Avila explained the motivation.

“We did it for Nevin, man, that’s all there is to that,” he said solemnly. Franks had been an active cheerleader all night, almost as into it as the student sections, with their signs, cheers and borderline-derisive fun and games. He’d stood on medical stilts on the side as the Bulldogs went through pregame warmups. Each and every Purple player had come by to slap palms with the fallen point man. Each was sad for him, and wondered how The Mac would answer the ball without its senior QB.

The answer, of course, was exceedingly well.

“It was tough to see, him getting hurt, but we had to pick it up,” said Avila, who indeed lifted up the entire team and carried it to the win. “We were all excited to compete once the game began, and we played as a team. There are no individuals here, we practice as a team and we play like it.”

Swift has always said that Big J.J. has the court sense of a guard, and though Pompa did the job at the 1 Friday, the coach knows that Avila was able to help him out.

“He has terrific vision, and he can see the floor so well,” said Swift of Avila. “And Pompa, for a guy who has not played that role, he was able to hold his own. It’s been a rough week all the way around…getting Nick back was big, because he’s so athletic. I can’t wait to see him when he gets his basketball legs back.”

The triumphant McHigh fans began to exit the gym with a minute left, maybe more, walking single file along the sideline but in rare voice, giving it hard to the homeside Memorial kids at the other end of the gym. One of the Mustangs let fly with a plastic, yellow mini-basketball, and it sailed into the throng of Purple; it was almost Friday Night Fights for a second there but cooler heads prevailed, with most agreeing that no harm, no foul was in effect.

It was somewhat surprising, however, that when the yellow pill came looping out of the crowd, Avila was not there to paw the loose ball, shimmy-shake free of a defender, and cruise downcourt for a scintillating pass or sky-walking shot. It would not have surprised anyone had he done just that.

Tags: basketball, mcallen high, memorial high school