Heidelberg's Chris Cuthbert, right, and Eugene Jones show their fans Lion pride after defeating Ramstein, 73-51, in the Division I title game at the DODDS Europe basketball championships in Mannheim, on Saturday night. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Heidelberg's Chris Cuthbert, right, and Eugene Jones show their fans Lion pride after defeating Ramstein, 73-51, in the Division I title game at the DODDS Europe basketball championships in Mannheim, on Saturday night. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Heidelberg's Chase Boone gets past the defense of Ramstein's DeVonte Allen, left, and Samuel Wetleson to score in the Lions' 73-51 win over Ramstein in the Division I title game. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Ramstein's James Cho takes on the defense of Heidelberg brothers Maurice, left, and Marcel Simon in the Division I title game. Heidelberg beat Ramstein, 73-51, to capture the crown. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
MANNHEIM, Germany — MVP Eugene Jones might not have led the scoring or rebounding charts in Heidelberg’s 73-51 dethroning of two-time defending champion Ramstein in the European Division I boys basketball title game Saturday night.
But Jones was far and away tops on the emotional scale.
“There are so many different emotions going through me, I don’t know what to say,” Jones said about winning Heidelberg’s first basketball championship since 2008. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or hug everybody.”
As it turned out, Jones, who scored 11 points — four of them during Heidelberg’s 17-7 run in the game’s opening seven minutes — chose all three as the Lions embraced, smiled and celebrated their third title-game victory over their archrival in the last five European D-I championship games. Ramstein, which had won the previous two showdowns by two points in 2010 and six points the previous year, was hardly in the game Saturday.
Much of the difference came from Heidelberg’s power underneath the basket. The Lions out-rebounded Ramstein by a margin approaching 2-to-1.
“That was a big point for us coming into the game,” said Heidelberg’s all-tourney forward Chris Cuthbert, who scored 13 points. “Ramstein plays great post basketball, and we wanted to make sure we boxed them out.”
Heidelberg, which defeated Ramstein 43-40 and 49-45 for the 2007 and 2008 titles, won the European crown for the seventh time since 2000 and the 18th time in the 61-year history of this event.
It was the first title at Heidelberg for Lions’ coach and athletic director Ron Merriwether, who took the reins when the school decided in the fall to replace longtime coach Brad Shahan. It wasn’t Merriwether’s first DODDS Europe championship, however. As a player, he played on a European championship team at Giessen in 1994, then coached his alma mater to Division III titles in 2006-2007, just before the school closed.
Ramstein, coached by another former DODDS Europe player, Kaiserslautern grad Andrew O’Connor, had difficulty penetrating the Lions’ defense and relied heavily on the three-point shot. DeVonte Allen, who tied Heidelberg’s Stirling Thomas for game-scoring honors with 19 points and joined Thomas on the all-tournament team, canned four of them, but three of his threes came in the final quarter with the game out of reach. Jarrod Henry scored all 15 of his points on treys, and guard Thomas Amrine, also voted to this year’s all-tournament team, sank two en route to his 10 points.
Clutching his all-tourney team plaque, Cuthbert, who missed the 2010 season with a football injury, savored the moment at game’s end.
“It’s definitely a great feeling,” he said. “This team is like a family.”
Story updated February 27
