The562’s coverage of Jordan Athletics is sponsored by former LBUSD superintendent Chris Steinhauser and the Timu Foundation.
One thing you cannot physically measure with any team is resiliency. The ability to take punches and shake off setbacks on and off the court.
And while unmeasurable, it is clearly in the makeup of Jordan High, a program that’s been without a home gym for two seasons, currently down its head coach due to a leave of absence and a team that needed a buzzer beater just to be in the postseason.
That mental strength came through on Friday night as the Panthers survived a furious comeback from Torrance High for a tense 71-64 victory in the second round of the CIF-SS Division 4A bracket.
“Man, my heart rate is at a full pace right now. If it wasn’t for Coach Chris [Francis] teaching our team how to be poised, and play hard every game. We practice hard. We don’t have any out of bounds when we practice. So, these kids are built for pressure cookers. Man, I’m not,” said interim head coach Jamaul Huff with a smile. “We’ve lost our coach for a while. Hopefully he’s coming back, and it’s just been tough. We haven’t had a gym in two years. So, the inexperience and not being in the gym. You see the rebounding. We’ve got to go finish rebounding the whole practice. That’s the only reason [Torrance] got back in the game. We would’ve won that game by 20, 25 points if we had the experience and rebounding. But I appreciate the positive effort and sticking with the game and being poised. We’ve been poised all season.”
Star shooting guard Aaron Chiles carried the Panthers through the final stretch of the night with a massive three with 1:45 left to break a 62-62 tie and put Jordan up for good. The junior Chiles led all scorers with 21 points, including 11 in the fourth quarter and six consecutive made free throws to seal the victory.
It was an all-round effort for Chiles who set the tone defensively with multiple steals and three blocks on top of several assists and rebounds. But it was his clutch three at the top of the key that highlighted a white-knuckle finish for the Jordan faithful.
“I saw a rim looking like the ocean,” said Chiles with a smile. “I knew I could hit it. I worked day in and day out. Like I said before, I knew I could hit it, so I shot it, and I trusted myself and I hit it.”
Torrance erased a nine-point fourth quarter lead for the Panthers behind junior Shane Stanfield, who scored 10 points of a 20-9 run and tied the game on back-to-back drives at 60-60 and 62-62, the closest the Tartars had been since trailing 5-4 in the first quarter.
The Tartars had a chance to tie the game once again after a pair of missed Jordan free throws at 65-62, but the Panthers dug in on defense to force two tough shots and bring in a rebound to set up Chiles’ first pair of free throws.
Junior Jordan point guard Malachi Burdette chipped in 12 points with multiple steals while Samajay Jackson added 14 points. Senior shooting guard Amir Bowser finished with 17 points behind five threes, three in the first half.
“[Amir] missed a lot of shots early in the season, and we told him, ‘You’re not just a shooter, just play basketball.’ We took the shooter away from him, and I took a lot of pressure off of him,” said Huff. “Now the team is energized by him making threes. So even when he misses, we know he’s gonna make them. He put in the work…he’s like the backbone of our team.”
The Panthers were well on their way to a convincing second-round win, at one point building a 19-point lead off a thunderous dunk from Jackson in the third. But that’s when the Tartars got to work, going on a 7-0 run to force a Jordan timeout.
Jackson ripped back some momentum out of the timeout with another gym-rocking dunk with a free throw to push the lead back to 13 points. Yet, Torrance continued to weather Jordan’s punches much better than it did in the first half, countering a late three from Alvino Duncan with a buzzer-beater three from Gibson Turner to make it 53-42 and set up the frantic fourth.
It was a stark contrast from the first half where Jordan got whatever it wanted with multiple dunks, a flurry of threes behind Bowser and 10 forced turnovers en route to a 35-24 halftime lead.
The Panthers will host Shalhevet next Tuesday in the Division 4A quarterfinals, the furthest run for the program since its title in 2022-23.
The road will only get tougher, but the Panthers are bonded like a team ready for more.
“We’re such a resilient team. We don’t have a coach like you said. We don’t have a stable gym to practice at while we’re renovating. [There’s] just so much resilience within this team, and I think it’s bonded us way closer together,” said Chiles. “We all love each other. We hang out with each other. We love each other. We’re brothers at the end of the day.”
“We thought we had a championship game from the beginning of the summer, and then we had some rocky roads with us not having a gym. I just felt like with what happened to our coach, and then us being in a Moore League, we were primed and ready where every game is like a pressure cooker. We’re ready,” said Huff. ”We’ve just got to get through the inexperience. That’s about it. But yeah, we’ve felt like we had a championship team from the beginning.”
