State Champs

Park View tops Barrington 47-42 to win state crown

By ALEX SPONSELLER
Posted 2/13/19

The Park View Middle School basketball team topped Barrington 47-42 last week at Johnston High School, capping off a perfect season and a state championship victory. After a disappointing end to last year when the Cougars fell early in the postseason,

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State Champs

Park View tops Barrington 47-42 to win state crown

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The Park View Middle School basketball team topped Barrington 47-42 last week at Johnston High School, capping off a perfect season and a state championship victory.

After a disappointing end to last year when the Cougars fell early in the postseason, the returning players were hungry in 2018-19 and determined to take the next step.

“I was proud of the guys. They had a really good year last year and ended up losing in the second round, so I was really proud of those guys who came all that way, especially in the end. We were down pretty much the whole game. Last year was definitely a factor,” said Park View coach Cory Bouchard, who also felt that familiarity within the roster was key. “The eighth graders have been playing together for a while in the CLCF leagues and the rec leagues, so they have good chemistry and they know each other, that helped them. We were also down at half time in three of our four postseason games which I think helped them too.”

Park View jumped out to an early 12-5 lead, but would stumble in the final minutes of the first half and trail 18-15 at the break. The two clubs battled closely throughout the second half, with Barrington holding the lead until the 2:29 mark, when Will Outar would score and give the Cougars their first lead of the period at 40-39.

Park View would come up with clutch free throws in the final minutes to set the score to 47-42 and secure the win and state title.

Azmar Abdullah led the Cougars with 19 points scored, while Outar added 12 and Abdul Evans seven. Matt Raffa led Barrington with 18 points in the loss.

“The kids really stuck with it. One of our best players, Azmar, got his fourth foul (with 11 minutes remaining) so that kind of deflated us. But then we put him back in with about eight minutes and he played really well, didn’t force anything. In the final few minutes we took the lead and the crowd really got into it,” said Bouchard.

Bouchard was excited to see his club bring home a title in his first year of coaching at Park View, and appreciated the support of the community on the state’s biggest stage.

“It was wild. This was my first year coaching at the middle school level so to have that kind of success was crazy. During the year we had about four games that could have gone either way but we were able to pull it out in the end. For those guys to keep it going and not lose a game throughout the year, it’s so great for those guys,” said Bouchard. “We saw guys from Western Hills, some kids from Bain, a lot of different people from the city come out. Even though we played them, there were a lot of people in the city that came out to support us which was great.”

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