But with the clock winding down below 10 seconds, freshman Prep guard Kory Hamane intercepted a Falcons pass at midcourt and pushed the ball downcourt to the streaking Chow, who rattled home a breakaway layup with just over two seconds remaining.
“Really all we had to do was play our defense and stop the ball,” Hamane said. “We were actually ready for the second overtime, but [the ball] just came to me and I pushed it up.”
The outcome changed nothing concerning today’s final round of games in the tournament. Crescenta Valley, with one loss, will still play for the championship at 7:45 p.m. against Simi Valley and Prep, with one win, plays for seventh at 3:15 p.m.
But for a Rebels team that had lost three straight and played on Thursday without injured center Kenyatta Smith, the win was a big boost.
“We knew without Kenyatta in the lineup we would be a lot faster,” said Chow, who had 17 points, seven rebounds, seven assists and three blocks. “Not that we didn’t need him — he would have helped a lot inside on Coltrane, because [Powdrill] had a lot of offensive rebounds.
“But we just kept pushing the ball because that’s what we knew we could do against these guys.”
Prep (2-3) entered the fourth quarter up, 51-42, and pushed its lead to 11 on a layup by Hamane.
Behind nine fourth-quarter points from Narbeh Ebrahimian (16 points, five assists), the Falcons (2-1) came back to take a 59-57 lead with 2:12 left in regulation. The Rebels tied the game on a floater by Chow from Aaron Fried (21 points, six assists) with 1:15 to go.
On Crescenta Valley’s final offensive sequence of regulation, Eric Yoo missed a three-point attempt, Powdrill missed on an initial putback attempt, was blocked from behind by Chow on a second and was called for traveling after rebounding his own miss.
After going down, 2-0, early, the Rebels never trailed. They pushed the tempo and spread the court to find open threes or open cutters off dribble penetration to build a 22-16 lead after one quarter and a 38-29 lead at the half.
“I don’t know if guys realized how much energy is exerted when you have to come back from a double-digit lead,” Falcons Coach Shawn Zargarian said. “We could not keep the ball in front of us tonight. Not having their big guy in there opened up the lane and they absolutely took advantage of it.”
