SoCalHoops High School News

CIF Southern Section Division V-A Championship: 
Price Beats Antelope Valley Christian, 77-60--(March 5, 1999)

This was a game between the Divsion's two top seeds, with No. 1 Price, the Coastal Life League Champion looking to claim their first-ever title.   The Knights, coached by Mike Lynch, came into the game with a 26-2 record, and registered some pretty  easy tournament wins against Shandon (73-31) in the first round, Orangewood (78-51) in the second round, and West LA Baptist (69-42) in the semifinals.  Antelope Valley Christian came into the game with a record of 21-2, cand also were challenging for their first ever Southern Section championship.  The Eagles 21 wins also included playoff victims Lake Arrowhead Christian (72-46), Southwestern Academy (75-70), Pilgrim (78-61) and Rio Hondo Prep (65-55) in the semifinals.

Here's the rosters, with the starters indicated with an asterisk (*):

This game was a surprise to no one who had seen Price during the season..  Starting Chris Alexander, Jermaine Jameson, Mychal Lynch, Michael Daniel and Othel Johnson, Price overwhelmed Antelope Valley Chrisitian, and most of the damage was done in the third quarter, in which Price outscored the Eagles 26-16.   Matthew Nurse, who came into this game averaging 21 ppg, was held to just 9 points, scoring only 3 in the entire second hafl, and just 1 asssist, largely because of Lynch, who guarded him like a wet blanket.  The game started out close, and at the end of the first quarter, Price only led by 3 pints, 20-17, but by the half, they had stretched the lead to 6, leading 36-30, as Othel Johson led all scorers in the first half with 14 points.  Peter Beaudin had 10 points, and was the high scorer for AVC in the first half. Price was running a two-three zone trap defense and a straight man defense, and it was mostly the man-to-man coverage that bothered AVC. Of course the 18 turnovers committed by AVC didn't help either.

In the second half, Price shot .647 from the field, on 11 for 17 shooting and, as noted above, it was the decisive third quarter which really did AVC in. Chris Alexander, Jermaine Jameson, and Andrew Howard all scored, while only Jamal Flanagan and Peter Beaudin were threats at all in the entire second half for AVC. Bottom line: Antelope Valley was a "nice" team that was clearly overmatched in this game, and while they have some players who clearly have real potential to play at the next level, the sad fact is that while Antelope has it's entire team returning next year, so does Price (with the exceptiojn of Stephen Barrios, who didn't play). Price is going to be good for years to come, and from what we saw, they'll be just that much better than the rest of the Division for the forseeable future. 

The fourth quarter waws really pretty much a question of getting it over before anyone got hurt, but we've got to hand it to the Eagles, they never quit, never gave up, and they were playing tough defense and continuing to foul Price to stop the clock even though the game was hopelessly out of reach. And even though Price had no intention of committing any silly mistakes, AVC kept it close, allowing Price to outscore them in the fourth by only a single point 15-14.

In the end though, it was Price's superior athleticism which won the game, combined with excessive turnovers for AVC and a lack of really balanced scoring:  AVC came into this game with a history of just about killing all of their opponents on fairly even scoring among the starters.  tonight, they had only three plyers in double figures, and one of their starters, Scott Hannah, didn't score at all. In fact, other han Nurse, Jamal Flanagan, Peter Beaudin and John Cho, AVC had only one other scorer, who only managed 2 points.

Despite the loss tonight, we were impressed with Matthew Nurse's good ball-handling and excellent decision making. . . now if only some of his teammates would have caught more of those bullet passes, it might have been a different story.  And we were also impressed with the excellent skills of Peter Beaudin and Jamal Flanagan, who finished with 15 points, 2 assists, and 7 rebounds.  Of course, he also finished with 6 turnovers, and it was really the turnovers (AVC finished with 21 total) that killed them.  Price's most impressive player was Chris Alexander, who scored 14 points in the game on 7 fo14 shooting from the floor,  had 6 steals and 1 assist, but his game wasn't perfect: He had 4 turnovers, but all in all, not a bad day's work. Jermaine Jameson had 12 points and shot an amazing 6 for 6 from the floor, missed only one field goal,  picked up an assist and had 3 steals. Mychal Lynch shot 4 for 9 from the field and also only attempted one free throw (missing) for a total of 10 points; Lynch also picked up four assists. Othel Johnson had 20 points, a team high, but the high scorer in the game was Peter Beaudin, who finished with 23 points, on 11 for 17 shooting from the field, and he also had 6 rebounds, and 2 assists. Other scorers for Price were Aaron Allen with 5 poiknts, Kris Matthews 3, Michael Daniel with 4, and Andrew Howard with 9.  For AVC, others scoring were John Cho with 8 and Orlando Flanagan with 2.

This was a fun game, even if it was a bit lopsided, and we're looking forward to seeing both of these teams in the State Regionals which start this coming Tuesday. The seeding committee meets this Sunday, and we should have the brackets and the matchups late Sunday or early Monday morning. In the meantime, if you want to read about AVC, coach Nurse informs us that the team now has it's own website at   http://www.avcsbball.org.

Congratulations to Price on their first ever Section title, and to Antelope Valley Christian on being the runners-up.  See you at the State Tournament. 

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