Mesa basketball defeated Victor Valley College 95-91 in overtime to win their first game in the Holiday Inn Tournament at Mesa College.

       Victor Valley was up 91-90 until Novian Cherry got fouled and made a huge bucket with ten seconds left to give Mesa a 93-91 lead. On Victor Valley’s final possession they turned the ball over and Mesa won 95-91.

“I know we needed a bucket, and coach drew up a play for me, and it just happened,” said Cherry who finished with 37 points including five in overtime.

Darreon Tolliver showed his range finishing with 31 points. The forward from Morse hit most of his jump shots. “We needed every point we could get,” said Mesa coach Ed Helscher.

One of the biggest defensive stops of the game came at the end of regulation with the game tied at 84. Victor Valley was able to hold the ball for the last shot, and good defense forced a long jump shot that missed to send this game to overtime.

In overtime, the score went back and forth and Tolliver was one of the big reasons scoring four points in the overtime, “Just staying tight as a team the whole game, playing great defense, sticking to the script,” were the keys to the game according to the big man.

“Their best player is the #1 scoring guard in the state, we just wanted to make other players around him score, we kinda shut him down but he had a nice second half. Another big part was to run them, they only had six players we wanted to make them tired,” said Cherry who executed the game plan well along with the rest of his teammates.

J.J. Coleman, a freshman guard from Las Vegas had a huge game, he scored 12 points and played some good defense to help secure the Mesa win.

Another freshman, Vincent Petties-Wilson hit a big three that tied the game late in the second half to finish with seven points.

The first half was absolutely dominated by Cherry and Tolliver. Combined they scored 36 of the 44 points that Mesa scored in the first half.

Mesa has won three straight games and they have improved their record to 7-4. This was Mesa’s second highest game of the season, they scored 99 on November 15th at Palomar in a win.

Mesa will play their next game tomorrow at 4:30.