Jack Jennings has done it - again! From this morning's Cincinnati Enquirer:
Sunday, July 31, 2005
'Truck' Jennings leads team to title
Deveroes Summer League
By Bill Koch
Enquirer staff writer
The old man was flexing his right bicep and doing a little wiggle dance in the backcourt just as the game was about to be stopped.
Jack "Truck" Jennings, 34, had just dropped 28 points on Stanley Litz Law Firm - 16 in the second half - to lead John H. Flessa Law Firm to a surprisingly lopsided 110-94 victory in the final of the Deveroes Summer League postseason tournament Saturday night at Woodward High School.
John H. Flessa won the championship game despite playing without University of Cincinnati forward Eric Hicks, who left Thursday for USA Basketball trials in Colorado Springs, Colo. With Hicks out west, Jennings was more than able to pick up the slack.
For those who have watched Jennings play in this league every year since he graduated from Holmes High School in 1989, his performance was nothing unusual.
At 6 feet 5, 255 pounds, Jennings, who averaged 33.9 points during his senior year at Holmes, knows how to back people down and use his body inside. If he's left alone, he can knock down 3-pointers. And if you double-team him, he's an expert at finding the open man.
"We consistently look for him the whole game," said David Shelton, a former Western Hills and Tulsa star, who scored 23 points. "He is our offense. If we go to him, nine times out of 10, he's going to get our shooters some shots. If they don't double-team him and he's having a good game, he'll score."
These were the league's top two teams during the regular season. John H. Flessa finished 7-1. Stanley Litz was 6-2.
The only loss for John H. Flessa was an 82-77 defeat June 21 to Stanley Litz. Jennings scored only 13 points in that game.
John H. Flessa trailed by three at halftime after Stanley Litz's Jimmy Binnie, a sophomore at Dayton, went off for 19 first-half points. But in the second half, Flessa held Binnie to just two points and slowed the tempo of the game just enough for Jennings to do his thing.
"They just outplayed us in the first half," Jennings said. "In the second half, we slowed the ball down and played inside."
Former Dayton star Keith Waleskowski, who scored 38 points in last week's semifinals, scored 23 points with 10 rebounds to lead Stanley Litz.
But Jennings has about 10 years on Waleskowski, and he benefited from that experience Saturday.
"He's a big guy and he's a veteran so he knows how to grab and hold and get away with it," Waleskowski said. "... He knows how to do the little things to make it a real pain to guard him, and when he's guarding you he's tough."
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