Wendell \u201cWoWo\u201d Moe, Jr. & Tyson Ruffins.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Battle for Atlantic Avenue was moved to the other side of Signal Hill on Monday evening, and the outcome was different than it\u2019s been in quite some time. With renovations happening to the Jordan High gym, the Panthers hosted their rivals from Long Beach Poly at Browning High, with their eyes on earning a long-awaited victory over the Jackrabbits.<\/p>\n
J-Town\u2019s evening began with a swished three-pointer by Harmony Isaac on the first shot of the night, and the Panthers led the rest of the way in a 30-23 victory over their rivals from 49 blocks south.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that a lot of these games are going to be similar to this,\u201d said Jordan head coach Wesley Rosenbaum. \u201cThey\u2019re not going to be that clean. It\u2019s gonna be about making some adjustments, rebounding the 50\/50 balls, and players coming up big in big moments. And they did. They just kept fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior point guard Janiah Lorn led the way for the Panthers with a game-high 12 points, and did a nice job creating scoring chances throughout the game, though points proved tough to come by for both teams. Isaacs had all eight of her points in the first quarter to help get Jordan off on the right foot, and senior Jah\u2019asharee Moore chipped in six points for the Panthers.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been at least two decades since Jordan has taken down Long Beach Poly in girls\u2019 basketball, and the win was also essential in keeping Jordan atop the Moore League standings with two other one-loss teams, Lakewood and Wilson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was very important, especially to our seniors and our coaches, because Jordan hasn\u2019t beat Poly in like 25 years,\u201d Lorn explained after the game. \u201cSo we wanted to make sure that we came out with enough mental focus to make sure that we stayed focused throughout the whole game. Even if we had turnovers, even if they went on runs, we made sure to stay steady throughout the whole game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan\u2019s defense did well to limit Poly\u2019s offense, especially to open the game. The Jackrabbits had just one made field goal over the first 11 minutes before they started to get some cleaner looks and pull closer. Jordan led by as many as eight points in the second quarter before holding a 16-12 halftime advantage.<\/p>\n
The teams traded buckets for most of the second half, but Jordan was able to go ahead by six heading into the final period on consecutive buckets by Moore and Lorn.<\/p>\n
Poly got a big lift from freshman Jovahnah Dalton, who scored eight of her team-high 10 points in the second half.<\/p>\n
Jordan\u2019s victory has been part of a steady build under Rosenbaum\u2019s leadership, and it was meaningful for a 12th grader like Lorn who has been a four-year varsity player and was finally able to celebrate a win over the reigning league champs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great, especially for our seniors, because we\u2019ve been on varsity for four years, we\u2019ve been working hard in the gym,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost games, we\u2019ve cried over games, we\u2019ve gone through everything in the book. So I feel like for this to be the outcome, we deserve it because of everything we\u2019ve been through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan (13-7, 4-1) will continue their important week of games on Wednesday night when they visit Wilson, while Poly (4-12, 2-3) is back in action the same night at Cabrillo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The562\u2019s coverage of Jordan Athletics is sponsored by former LBUSD superintendent Chris Steinhauser and the Timu Foundation. The562\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-131330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}