Jolley: Leesburg game so good it almost defied description

Sometimes a game is so good it almost defies description.

That was the case Friday when the Leesburg High School boys basketball team hosted Rockledge for the Class 5A-Region 2 championship.

Leesburg beat the Raiders 62-59 to advance to its third state semifinal in five years – the Yellow Jackets will face Fort Walton Beach Choctawhatchee at 2 p.m. Thursday in the R.P. Funding Center in Lakeland. The game wasn’t decided until the closing seconds, when Rockledge launched – and missed – a final 3-point attempt and the Yellow Jackets secured the last rebound it would need.

The game featured 10 ties and 21 lead changes. That means a tie was forged or the lead changed hands on 31 possessions.

There were 59 possessions in the game in which points were scored, including two-shot attempts from the free-throw line are counted as possessions. In other words, the game was tied or the lead traded hands on more than half of those possessions.

Neither team led by more than six points – Rockledge’s largest lead in the third quarter.

For Leesburg, it was the fifth time in the past six seasons the Yellow Jackets have ended Rockledge’s season in the postseason. In fact, Rockledge has not beaten Leesburg in the postseason in this Century.  

Friday’s game was everything a championship game is supposed to be.

An absolute classic. 

The kind of game you sit around with friends and compare to others you’ve seen. Or talk about during an NBA game and a player something and you compare it to Friday’s game.

“Did you see that drive by LeBron?” someone says.

“Seriously?” you respond. “That was nothing compared to that time (Leesburg’s) Justice Robinson went to the rack against Rockledge.”

It was so good that in the coming months, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that 40,000 or 50,000 people claimed they were in The Hive – the name by which Leesburg’s gym is affectionately known – Friday night, even though the building holds only about 1,200.  

It was a Lake County version of Hoosiers, minus the picket fence. ("Huh," you say? Watch the movie).

The atmosphere in The Hive was electric.

Even before tipoff.

It went to a higher level after the opening tip went up.

Games that get a lot of pregame hype rarely live up to their billing. They end up being one-sided, poorly officiated, or one or both teams struggle on the bigger stage.

None of that applied Friday night.

Certainly, it wasn’t one sided and while the officiating crew probably missed a few calls – after all, even the best crews do over the course of a game, especially when teams play at the pace and intensity that Leesburg and Rockledge showcased – but the whistles weren’t a factor in the game, and both teams handled the pressure of playing with a Final Four berth at stake quite well.

Simply put, Friday’s game might’ve been the best boys game ever played at Leesburg since 2005, when new incarnation of The Hive first opened.

And that’s saying a lot, considering how many times the Yellow Jackets squared off over the years in that building against rivals Wildwood and Eustis.

Certainly, the stakes will be higher when the Yellow Jackets take the floor Thursday for its Final Four matchup with the Indians. Then again, the Yellow Jackets has developed quite a history of dominance and familiarity on that hardwood as well.

Leesburg has won four straight games at the R.P. Funding Center, formerly known as the Lakeland Center. Since 2002, when the Yellow Jackets lost in the Class 4A state semifinals, Leesburg has a 7-2 record in Lakeland, with three of those wins resulting in state championships in 2011, 2017 and 2018.

The Yellow Jackets’ last loss in Lakeland was March 3, 2012, when Miami Norland beat Leesburg to win its first of four straight Class 6A state championships.

And while another state championship – it would be the fifth in school history, including the 1977 Class 3A title – might make some people tend to forget Friday’s win which propelled the Yellow Jackets to the Big Dance, those who were on hand Friday might never forget.

It was that good.

Write to Frank Jolley at frank.jolley@dailycommercial.com