Taylorsville • Pick a line. It didn’t matter to Olympus’ Jeremy DowDell.
Monday’s closing game of the first Martin Luther King Jr. Shootout in Utah featured a battle between Class 5A and Class 4A’s top-ranked teams and was played on a court with a myriad of 3-point lines.
The closest arc on the floor was for high school play at Salt Lake Community College. The second, a little further out, was for college games — the SLCC Bruins. And since the Salt Lake City Stars also play on the court, the most challenging line was set for NBA distance.
The differences mattered not for DowDell. He stayed behind all of them in hitting a pair of early 3-pointers.
And DowDell was effective from a myriad of spots on the floor throughout the game, finishing with 34 points. Olympus only used six players, with DowDell going all 32 minutes, as the Titans stayed unbeaten with a 76-69 victory over Orem.
“To me, the difference was Jeremy DowDell. We had a game plan and everything with the game plan worked as to how we were going to guard Olympus,” Orem coach Golden Holt said. “Except for Jeremy DowDell.”
Olympus (14-0) grabbed a 35-32 lead at the intermission thanks to a pair of late drives into the paint by Rylan Jones.
But Jones, who finished with 16 points, wasn’t at his usual level. The University of Utah commit was fighting sickness, according to coach Matt Barnes. So DowDell’s output came at the most appropriate time for the Titans.
“I shot really well and my teammates were just finding me,” DowDell said. “I kind of felt a little sluggish, but I made my first couple of shots. I felt a little slow at the beginning but obviously was able to score the ball really well.”
Orem (10-4), paced by Ross Reeves’ 28 points and 19 from Puka Nacua, also shot well in the first half. But the start of the third quarter, in which the Tigers only scored one basket in the first five minutes, put Orem behind by 13 points.
The score was at 71-65 when the Tigers missed a pair of 3-point tries in the quarter’s final minute. DowDell then canned a pair of free throws to keep Olympus safely in the lead.
“We had a third quarter that really helped us push the lead out,” Barnes said. “But they never gave up. They kept coming back.”
The game was the fourth contest of the day at the MLK Shootout.
The day started with Sky View beating Dixie 52-37. The next game featured MaxPreps’ third-ranked team in the country, Bishop Montgomery from Torrance, Calif., defeating Bingham 61-40.
American Fork then knocked off BC Christian Prep, from Vancouver, British Columbia, by a 68-61 count.
OLYMPUS 76, OREM 69 <br>• Jeremy DowDell scores 34 points and Rylan Jones adds 16 as Olympus stays undefeated. <br>• Orem’s Ross Reeves sinks three 3-pointers and tallies 28 points for Orem, while teammate Puka Nacua scores 19. <br>• The game was the finale of the four-game MLK Shootout, which also included wins by Sky View, American Fork and Bishop Montgomery (Calif.).