The562’s coverage of Jordan Athletics is sponsored by former LBUSD superintendent Chris Steinhauser.
While you can’t control who you come across in the playoffs, what you can control is how you respond. Jordan fought back against a tough opponent in Mark Keppel in its Division 3AA playoff opener on Thursday night, but the Panthers were simply outmatched in a tough 55-23 loss.
“I’m proud of the girls and how they persevered through a challenging season that I think was a successful season,” said Jordan coach Wesley Rosenbaum. “It’s a young team, a lot of young players, and I think the only way to grow up is to go through experiences like this, and I think we faced a tough team and a really good program in Mark Keppel.”
Despite being ranked 27 spots ahead of Mark Keppel at No. 122 in the CIF’s new computer-generated rankings, there was an evident gap in skill against the Almont League champs who are a tight-knit team with lots of experience outside of the high school level. In contrast, MaxPreps has Jordan ranked at No. 328, over a hundred spots back from Mark Keppel at 183.
“I don’t understand how the computer system for rankings works, I just know who we had to play,” said Rosenbaum. “They’re a very good program. Last year I watched them play against St. Anthony in the semifinals of Division 2AA, and I know a lot of their players. It was a tough matchup for us and they showed our weaknesses that we know we had.”
Mark Keppel had the perfect matchup to Jordan’s 2-3 zone coverage with a guard-heavy team that was able to swing the ball around and consistently find open looks from the field. After giving up the first points of the game from the free throw line, the Aztecs scored 18 straight points in the opening quarter to jump out into a comfortable lead.
Jordan attempted to switch their zone around as the game went on to apply pressure to the perimeter, but the small spots of success were too late to make an impact. Rosenbaum credited Keppel after the game, and said it was hard to throw off a team with the experience and chemistry that the Aztecs have.
“We’re a zone team because it fits our personnel. We knew they were gonna shoot, so we extended out and tried to create some different pace in the game and change things up, but you’re trying to slow down a team that has a lot of experience and that was difficult,” he said. “We were just trying to throw different things at them in the second half, create some opportunities and push the ball.”
On the other side of the ball, the Panthers were unable to overcome some difficult tasks that the Keppel defense threw at them. The Aztecs switched between a variety of different coverages, both man and zone, a level of defense that Rosenbaum says his team wasn’t accustomed to.
“They run a lot of different looks, and when a team does that it makes the team that doesn’t have a tone of experience look to their coach and then they have to react in fast time and that’s difficult to do. So I think that showing lots of defensive looks showed some of our vulnerable areas, and we just couldn’t make the adjustments fast enough.”
The Panthers did find some bright spots in the fourth quarter with a pair of back-to-back threes from Harmony Isaac and Janiah Lorn. The Panthers nearly doubled their scoring from the previous three quarters, outsourcing Keppel 11-5 after it was already out of reach.
Despite the difficult task against an experienced team, the Division 3AA playoff appearance is a clear sign of improvement for the Jordan basketball team during the Rosenbaum era. Rosenbaum has taken the Panthers to the playoffs in a division higher than the previous year for the past three years, and he’s looking forward to seeing his young team continue to grow.
“You have to learn from every experience you go through, there’s no other option. The last three years we’ve gone up a full division, so it gets more competitive. It’s not like things have changed a whole lot, we’re working our tails off and we’re still together as always, but the talent level is high at 3AA and I think we felt that. So I don’t want them to put their heads down. I want them to be proud of themselves for getting here and we’ll go back to work.”
