Goliath (McCallie) Thumps David (Hamilton Heights)

Hawks Building Program With International Foundation

5in 0.0001pt 0in;">The tuition at Hamilton Heights is $4,000.

 

At McCallie, it’s $20,953 for day students and climbs to $39,285 for boarding students, according to the school's website.

 

“We’re the cheapest private school in Chattanooga,” Hamilton Heights basketball coach Bill Eller said. “One reason we keep the enrollment down is that it keeps the tuition and class sizes small.

 

At Hamilton Heights, there’s something else that’s small – the basketball roster. The Hawks dress nine players and there's something unique about the squad’s makeup. Three players are from Chattanooga, including the coach’s son, Ross, and five are international exchange student-athletes -- two from Serbia, two from Brazil and one from Lithuania.

 

While numbers are small, the dreams at Hamilton Heights, a young program not affiliated with the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association playing an independent schedule, are big.

 

“It’s not our goal to get into TSSAA,” Eller said. “If we get more international players, then the goal is, hopefully, to one day become an elite team ourselves.”

 

The Hawks, who took it on the chin for the second time at the hands of McCallie on Tuesday when they lost, 84-54, to the once-beaten and top-ranked Blue Tornado, have played one elite team (similar to an AAU squad), beating Georgia Elite, 56-49, last Thursday.

 

Hamilton Heights has also played the No. 1-ranked private school in Alabama, losing to Central Park, out of Birmingham, by a 64-56 score.

 

“Georgia Elite had a 7-foot kid, a 6-10 kid and a really good 6-2 guard,” Eller said. “The 7-10 kid and the 6-2 guard already have committed to South Florida, a Big East school, and we beat them by seven.”

 

Eller is willing to play any team. If a coach will return his call, he’ll find a spot on the schedule for that team.

 

McCallie’s Dan Wadley was quick to schedule two games against Hamilton Heights this season – both played at McCallie, figures to play the Hawks twice and most likely will participate in the up-and-coming program’s tournament next season.

 

“When they called I said I would play them twice every year,” said Wadley, whose Blue Tornado improved to 18-1 on the season with a 30-point blowout after whipping the Hawks, 74-43, on Dec. 9. “I have a lot of respect for them trying to build a program. They bring in good players.”

 

Hamilton Heights has learned a painful lesson over two games – so does McCallie.

 

The Hawks (16-8) led 19-15 after one quarter, but wilted under the pressure applied against them by the Blue Tornado on each end of the court.  

 

Cordell James, who scored 20 points that included five 3-pointers to share team scoring honors with C.J. Reese, drilled a 3 and Reese made two free throws to give McCallie its first lead at 29-27 with 3:04 left in the second quarter.

 

Hamilton Heights’ Rokas Paulauskas, a 6-7 junior forward from Kedainiai, Lithuania, tied the game at 29, but the Blue Tornado outscored the Hawks, 9-0, over the final 2:58 to cap an 18-4 run and take a 38-29 lead into halftime. Paulauskas scored 13 points.

 

The Hawks’ Velibor, Njegovanovic, a 6-5 senior guard from Belgrade, Serbia, said that one memory of the first encounter with McCallie stood out to him in a pregame chat prior to Tuesday’s action.

 

“They have really, really good guards,” the 18-year-old Njegovanovic said, adding that players his age in Serbia don’t have the option to play basketball and attend school at the same time. “They’ve got a good post player, but their guards are very good.”

 

How good was evident in the third and fourth quarters.

 

Blue Tornado guards accounted for 34 of McCallie’s 46 second-half points, including five 3-pointers. Two Hamilton heights players – Paulauskas and Neminja Todoric, also from Belgrade, played with foul trouble. Paulauskas fouled out with 3:06 remaining and the outcome well in hand for the Blue Tornado. Todoric finished with 12 points.

 

“I thought our guards played exceptionally well after the first quarter,” Wadley said. “They shot the ball real well. And when they (Hawks) started coming out defensively, we started dumping it to our post players for some buckets in there.”

 

It also was obvious the Hawks couldn’t contain McCallie’s quickness, and Njegovanovic explained why the European players have a problem with that aspect of the game.

 

“In American basketball everybody runs,” said Njegovanovic, who scored five points. “In Europe we play slow basketball.”

 

Is play in Europe physical?

 

“No,” he said. “We play like smart. In America, players can run and jump and do anything they want. In Eruope, we like to shoot the ball. That’s a big difference. This is a good experience for me because I’m learning to run and play fast basketball. We don’t have that in Europe.”

 

Hamilton Heights had an impressive guard of its own.

 

Six-foot-two junior Filipe Goncalves, of Franca, Brazil, scored a game-high 24 points, 14 and all three of his 3s, coming in the second half.

 

Njegovanovic, Todoric, Paulauskas and Goncalves start for the Hawks, along with Chattanoogan Carson Reno, a 5-10 guard.

 

Jhony Monteiro, , a 5-11 junior guard from Vitorio, Brazil, the fifth international player on the Hawks’ roster, played but did not score against the Blue Tornado.

 

Jamaal Calvin, whose last-second 3-pointer gave McCallie a 43-42 victory over rival Baylor on Saturday, scored 12 points and post Terrance O’Donohue added 10.

 

Despite the second lopsided loss to McCallie this season, Njegovanovic said his experience at Hamilton Heights will be beneficial in the future.

 

“I love basketball,” he said. “I want to study and play at the same time, so America is a good chance for me and my future. After four years of college here studying and playing basketball, I want to go back to Europe and play professional basketball. America will give me a good education and I can find a job in Europe that will pay me a lot. I want to be a sports manager (agent). I want to stay in sports. I don’t want to waste my time doing anything else.”

 

In an attempt to create his own basketball powerhouse like Wadley has done at McCallie, Eller is making the most of his European contact, MarcoVoluzic, to keep the player pipeline to Hamilton Heights open.

 

“Three of our kids came here because of him (Voluzic),” said Eller, who was the head coach at Hixson for 10 years before going to Hamilton Heights.

 

If foreign players, whose parents back in the old country can keep up with them through live streams of Hawks games on the internet, continue to show up at Hamilton Heights, then Eller and the Hawks just might achieve their ultimate goal.

 

“We can’t win district or region titles, but we can win a national championship,” said Eller, who also had Soddy-Daisy, Cleveland, Central, East Hamilton, Silverdale, Meigs County, Polk County and Copper Basin on this season’s schedule. “We play in the National Association of Christian Athletes tournament at Fort Bluff in Dayton at the end of the year. We made it to the finals last year, losing to a team from Illinois. That was pretty exciting. That’s our motivation. One reason we play a tough schedule is to prepare for the national tournament.”

 

BOXSCORE

Hamilton Heights    19   10   13   12 – 54             

McCallie                    15   23   22   24 – 84             

 

Hamilton Heights (54) -- Velibor Njegovanovic 5, Filipe Goncalves 24, Rokas Paulauskas 13, Jhony Monteiro, Neminja Todoric 12,  Ross Elder, Cody Baskette.

 

McCallie (84) -- Jorden Williams 5, C.J. Reese 20, C.J. Fritz, Jamaal Calvin 12, John Estees 2, Terrance O’Donahue 10, Zac Hobbs, Eric Wolf 6, Jalen Kellum 9, Cordell James 20.

 

3-Point goals: Hamilton Heights 3 (Goncalves 3); McCallie 10 (James 5, Calvin 3, Williams 1, Wolf 1).

 

(E-mail Larry Fleming at fleminglrry@aol.com)