By Aaron Coloma

“Overrated” chants echoed throughout the Cleveland Charter High School gym as the Cavaliers overcame a 16-point deficit in the fourth quarter, defeating Alijah Arenas’ Chatsworth Chancellors 76-74 in overtime Friday evening.

Chase Manzani sent the game to overtime with a layup following the first of two clutch threes from senior Roman Finney, the second of which gave the Cavs a late lead in overtime. Cayden Kelly led Cleveland in scoring with 21 points, closely followed by Kamari King with 18 points and Finney with 16 points.

“It’s a moment where we can crumble or a moment where we can rise,” said Cavaliers head coach Dagan Asfaw. “Being down that many points, we had to switch something up, so we ended up trapping and having to fly around, gamble a little bit to make the game a little more ugly, which went in our favor.”

Kelly scored the first points of the game, driving for a nice bucket and sinking one of two from the charity stripe to give the Cavs a 3-0 lead. The lead didn’t last long, though, as Arenas sunk a shot from beyond the arc and slammed a breakaway dunk for five of his seven points during the quarter, which ended 19-12 in favor of the Chancellors. Arenas ended the night with 35 points.

The Chancellors maintained this lead throughout the game until midway through the fourth quarter, when 6’8” senior center Taj Unuakhalu fouled out.

“We lost our biggest defender, our best rebounder, our best shot blocker, our best off-ball defender,” said Chancellors head coach Sam Harris. “That was big for us. It is what it is, guys have got to step up, make plays and we just didn’t do that tonight.”

Almost immediately, Cleveland began to string points together and shrink the gap. Down 66-50, the Cavaliers went on a 16-0 run to tie the game, not allowing the Chatsworth offense to score a single point for the remainder of regulation.

“We had some really bad turnovers,” said Harris. “That’s really it. The crowd got back into the game, they fed off that energy and we just couldn’t recoup. We were fumbling the ball a little bit, we couldn’t close.”

Kelly struck first for the Cavs in overtime as well, giving them a 68-66 lead, their first since the first quarter. Cleveland took the lead for good in OT when Finney hit a three to make the score 75-73.

“A lot of those shots I know that I can make,” said Finney. “Once I hit that first one I knew I could just keep looking for it again. I kind of got in the zone after that, you know what I mean? After I hit the first one and we had a block by our big, it turned the whole game around so it was a great feeling to have.”

Both teams would miss one of two free throws in their following possessions, and a final, unsuccessful heave from Chatsworth would end the game.

“Going into the locker room, I congratulated my boys, but to be honest with you, now we have the biggest target on our back,” said Asfaw. “I would assume people are looking at us to be the best team in the city right now after beating Chatsworth. We just have to stay humble, keep working hard, stay within ourselves but know that every team is gonna give us their best shot every night.”

Cleveland will look to extend their unbeaten run to 11 games on Jan. 27, when they travel to Northridge Academy for a 7:00 p.m. tip-off. Chatsworth will defend home court as they look to return to winning ways against Birmingham Jan. 29 at 4:55 p.m.