rocky top league ends with exciting finale’

The biggest crowd of the Rocky Top League’s short six-game season didn’t leave disappointed Wednesday night after seeing the HT Group cap a perfect run through their 2008 schedule by outlasting Ray’s ESG, 133-126, to wrap up the championship in the second season of the wildly popular summer basketball league.

A reported crowd in excess of 3,000 people was in attendance at the Bearden High School gymnasium to take in the Rocky Top League finale’, a double-bill featuring the Toyota of Knoxville team edging the News-Sentinel squad, 103-102, in the consolation game before East Tennessee State star Courtney Pigram outshone some of his more renowned peers with a game-high 45-point effort to lead the HT Group to the exciting, fast-paced seven-point championship game victory.

The HT Group finished the 2008 season with an unblemished 6-0 record. Ray’s ESG, which lost a double-overtime thriller to HT Group on June 18, finished with a 4-2 mark.

Pigram, who for much of the summer was overshadowed on his own team by University of Tennessee All-SEC junior forward Tyler Smith, gave the HT Group the lead when he sank a three-pointer with 20 seconds to go.

Incoming Tennessee point guard Bobby Maze, a former junior college All-American who has dazzled fans this summer with his offensive skills and intensity, had a chance to tie the game at 127 but his long, arching shot bounced high off the rim and was corralled by Smith who turned the long rebound into an easy transition bucket at the other end, putting the HT Group up 129-124.

Both squads traded scores down the stretch as the HT Group managed to hang for the 133-126 win.

Smith, the top overall pick in the league’s preseason draft, finished with 37 points for the HT Group. Tennessee’s incoming freshman point guard Daniel West finished with 14 points and 10 assists for the Rocky Top League Champions, and Pigram’s teammate at ETSU, Greg Hamlin, contributed 14 points for the HT Group.

Ray’s ESG was led by Maze’s 39 points and incoming UT freshman Scotty Hopson’s 36 points. Rising UT sophomore power forward Brian Williams pitched in 25 points for the runners-up.

Ray’s ESG was missing the league’s scoring champion, Tennessee redshirt freshman swing-man Cameron Tatum, who did not play in Wednesday’s league championship tilt. Tatum’s final scoring average of 34.3 points per game was best in the league, followed by Smith’s six-game season average of 28.8 points per contest. Pigram’s 28.5 points per game was good for third in the star-studded league.

Ray’s ESG teammates and future UT backcourt running-mates Hopson and Maze proved to be an exciting 1-2 punch, delivering per game scoring averages of 26.4 and 26.0, respectively.