Kevin Love and the Love fest at Lake Oswego--3/3/07

To no one's surprise, the Lake Oswego Lakers dominated the Gresham Gophers tonight in the "round of 16" of the Oregon 6A Boys basketball tourney by a score of 70-41. [The tournament picks up in Eugene, OR next Thursday with the final eight teams.] The final score actually makes the game seem closer than it was. The fifteen seconds from the opening tip, won by Lake Oswego, to the first score (Love on an offensive rebound putback, fouled, which he converted for a 3-0 lead), set the tone for the game. Lake Oswego would score at will by feeding Love, a gargantuan and skilled force inside or, when he was surrounded by three Gresham defenders, simply be content with having Ernie Spada throw up a three or Landon Ainge float a shot from the foul stripe. In fact, in the first quarter LO was so adept at peppering Gresham from all angles that it led by a 21-4 score after the quarter, and Love still had only three points.

Perhaps conscious of the fact that Love wants to, and probably will, break the all-time schoolboy scoring record in Oregon in any classification in the State Tournament next week, his teammates began feeding him in the second quarter. That his scoring was effortless is clear from his 1st Half scoring stats: 7 for 7 from the field, 4 for 5 from the line, 18 points. By the time Love finally checked out of the game with two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, he had his customary 35 points, 11 boards and 6 blocks. He needs only about 40 more points to break the Oregon scoring record of 2584 points (held by 2A player, Bob Hunt, who graduated from Knappa HS in 1957). Love surpassed the 4A record, held by the Atlanta Hawks' Salim Stoudamire, about 250 points ago. With possibly three games still left to play, he should easily surpass Hunt's mark.

Indeed, the state tournament, beginning next Thursday on McArthur Court at the University of Oregon, will almost certainly see a finals rematch between Kyle Singler-led South Medford and LO. LO won by about five points last year, but this year, with SM having beaten LO in the Les Schwab classic in December, and with both SM and LO being top 10 in the nation teams at some time this year, the attention on this game will be huge. I plan to attend the tournament next week in Eugene. In the remainder of this essay I would like to assess Kevin Love's basketball play, conscious of the fact that I am building on my essay of two years ago when he was a sophomore in the state finals game against Jesuit.

Beginning with a Story

One of my colleagues shared the following story with me. Her daughter is a senior at Lake Oswego High School. During her daughter's freshman year, my colleague thought she would "help out" at school by leading a discussion of a group of freshmen at their orientation and emphasizing to them how important it was to learn about colleges while you were still in your early high school days. She explained to the small group of students: "Perhaps you want to study English or History. You owe it to yourself to go to the colleges and learn all you can about their programs." Then she went around the circle of students asking them what they might be interested in studying. Kevin Love was one of the freshmen in the group. When the circle got to him, my colleague realized that she had spoke too soon. Even then it was clear to all that Kevin wouldn't have to worry about which History or English program interested him. Indeed, my colleague remembers him saying something like, "I don't think I will need to go to a college because of its English program..." Indeed, not.

Moving to His Game

That confidence has characterized Kevin Love's game since his freshman year. How he differs from two years ago, when I last wrote about him, is that he has fully recovered from a knee injury which slowed him in the state finals game of 2005, he has more deeply muscled his upper body so that he is probably as strong as any college big man at this point (he is listed at 6'10'' and 260 lbs.), he has developed his three-point shot, and has added to his repertoire some explosive moves which we saw a glimpse of tonight. He is so dominant that even when LO plays sloppily, which it did for several minutes tonight (passes not crisp, little offensive movement), he can "redeem" the bad sequence through a lay in, a drive from the foul line or a thunderous alley-oop dunk (he had two of those tonight). It doesn't seem to matter if he has well-muscled guys who are defending him. His defender tonight was 6'6'' and 240 pounds, but Love played as if he was guarded by no one.

The one thing that was evident to all tonight, however, was his explosive potential and his quickness. This latter quality is sometimes belied by his "Kareem Abdul Jabbar"-style on offense. What I mean by that is that he will sometimes "jog" down the court after dishing off a rebound, expecting his teammates to "wait" for him until he has gotten himself into place. But there were two occasions tonight, apart from his "alley-oop dunks," where we witnessed his quickness and athletic intensity. Both of them were on near breakaways. That he was on breakaways indicates he can run the floor with anyone. In the second of the two he got the rebound, passed quickly to Ernie Spada on the left, and then took off down the center of the court, with a defender in close pursuit. Spada rifled a bounce pass to Love as he passed center court. With a head of steam and intensity, he left his feet near the foul line, stretching high and far above the basket. Even though he was then hit from behind by the defender, Love still managed to ram the basketball against he back of the iron, where it bounced about 30 feet back towards midcourt. The defender was tagged with an intentional foul, though the call was debatable. In protest against the call, the Gresham coach was given a technical foul (Love sank 2/4 of the foul shots--personal and technical). I think the refs were just "protecting" Love. He was in a very vulnerable position to a hit from the rear as he soared towards the basket. And, the guy who hit him was a freshman. Got to send signals to people, you know. The defender may have been thrown out of the game, for he didn't appear after that.

In any case, what is evident this year is not only that Kevin Love possesses superior court sense, can deliver pinpoint accurate passes, can score at will against almost anyone, and knows how to position himself for rebounds but that he can play with the kind of athleticism which people thought that a person his size might not have. He can also run the floor; he can seemingly hang from the rafters; and he has an intensity that is only matched, at least in this state, by 6'9'' Kyle Singler...

Conclusion

Speaking of South Medford's Singler (who reminds me of another Oregonian--Michael Dunleavy--when he was a sophomore at Duke), he was able to help SM beat LO late in December by being the one who guarded Kevin Love. For a while it was almost a "battle of the titans." This strategy got both of them into foul trouble, and seemed to throw Love off his game a slight bit. The "giants" almost neutralized each other, leaving the better other players of SM (Michael Harthun is probably the best junior in the state, with the possible exception of Brad Tinsley of Oregon City) to tip the game in favor of SM. I would think that SM would employ this strategy again. Nothing else, I am sure, would stop the Love machine.

2501