Mustang Boys Basketball Team Begins Regional Play Tonight

By CHRIS CAPANNOLA
February 21, 2012

The George Mason High School boys varsity basketball team begins regional play tonight (Tuesday February 21) at 7pm at the Mary Ellen Henderson gymnasium against Randolph Henry High School.   George Mason enters the regional tournament as the #2 seed, and Randolph Henry at the #7 seed.  The Statesmen, from the James River District, have a 14-10 overall record and finished third in their league in the regular season.  The winner of Tuesday’s game will advance to the regional semifinals on Thursday night.

In the district final game that propelled GM into the regionals, Bull Run District Player of The Year Noel Obusan scored 20 points and fellow First Team selection Nate Ogle added 13 as George Mason defeated William Monroe 67-54 Thursday night. Mason (22-4) won the regular season and tourney championships in the same season for the first time since the 2000-2001 campaign.

Senior guard Eion Oosterbaan played a near flawless game for Mason, scoring 14 points on 4-5 shooting, including 3 huge three-pointers. He also snagged 3 key rebounds, had 2 steals, and played stifling defense on Monroe’s explosive guards.

GM was down by as many as 10 points in the first half before Oosterbaan connected on two triples, and an acrobatic ‘and one’ bucket by Obusan at the end of the half pulled Mason to within one at 36-35 at the break. The game see sawed back and forth throughout the second half. Mason went on a 9-0 run to go up 49-40 in the third, but the Greene Dragons went on an immediate 9-0 run of their own over the next 3:23 to knot the game at 49. Another Oosterbaan long range dagger put GM up 52-49 at the end of the third.

Defense and rebounding allowed the Stangs to limit WM to only 5 points in the fourth period. Obusan put on a Globetrotter-like ball handling display in the final minutes, yo-yoing the ball back and forth as frustrated Monroe defenders tried for steals. He went 8-8 from the line in the stanza, not allowing Monroe to gain any ground. Jeremy Stewart went 6-6 from the charity stripe and Ogle was 6-6 as well, part of a solid 25-29 GM effort from the line for the game. Stewart also dished out 3 assists.