One couldn’t tell the Parkland and Liberty boys basketball teams that last Thursday night’s game was just a summer league game. The two teams battled all game and into an extra frame in the regular season finale of the Stellar Summer League at Cedar Beach Park. The Trojans were the only team to score in overtime, and took the game 66-64.

Rising junior Jake Bartholomew led the way with a team-high 19 points. Senior Sam Iorio tacked on 16 points, and classmate Michael Zeky added 10 for the hot-shooting Trojans, who hit 12 three-pointers in the game.

“It just came down to us knocking down the open shots that we got,” Bartholomew said. “Sometimes they can go in, and sometimes they don’t. Tonight we were on, and it helped us pull out the win.”

Bartholomew has been one of a few different Parkland players that have had to step up their games this summer in preparation for the winter season. The Trojans lost four of five starters from last season, so there will be plenty of minutes to go around. Along with Bartholomew and Zeky, senior Matt Persichetti (4 points), sophomore Logan Rindock (9 points), and Michael Ruisch (5 points) have all seen increased playing time, and have done their part to help Parkland finish with the No. 3 seed for the Stellar playoffs, which will get underway after the Stellar and SportsFest tournaments.

“We know that we are going to have to move the ball around a lot more,” said Bartholomew, “because we don’t have as many guys that can just take their guy to the basket one-on-one so easily. We are going to need more ball movement, and hope that we get people some open shots. Everyone is going to have to be on the same page. The more people that step up, the better we will be.”

With the Trojans out in front for most of the game, they could never quite put the game out of reach from the Hurricanes. Jeremy Johnson led all scorers with 23, and Cam Hoffman chipped in 15 for Liberty, who hit a game-tying basket with less than 10 seconds to go to tie the score at 64 and force overtime.

In the extra five-minute period, only one basket was scored and that was by the Trojans.

“It’s an enormous win,” said Bartholomew. “It gives us a lot of confidence moving forward here with the tournaments and then playoffs. People have been counting us out this year because of all that we lost. We know we still have a really good team here, we just have to go out and prove it. I think we’ll surprise some people.”

Parkland opens up their Stellar tournament play with a game Friday evening at Cedar Beach.