SoCalHoops High School News

Ocean View Tournament Of Champions:
One Huge Upset, One Huge Win--(Dec. 8, 1998)

Ok, so we're running a day behind here, but as usual, better late than never. But right about now Willie West is probably not saying the same thing.    If he's saying anything at all that's printable, he's saying something like "Don't be late. Be on time." Especially today, when the starters for Crenshaw showed up late, traveling to Ocean View this afternoon for their second round game with San Diego Horizon.  Why they didn't all carpool together, or at least follow each other on the freeway is something that we're betting Willie is asking right about now, but hey, what's done is done. And as a result, the starters for Crenshaw didn't show up on time, and Horizon of San Diego, which beat Long Beach Jordan Monday to advance in the winner's bracket is about to be called the "killer of kings."  

Horizon beat Crenshaw.

What!!!!

Division V Horizon, out of San Diego, beating the next State Champions? 

Yes indeed.  Crenshaw lost, and Horizon won 76-70.    We don't know any other details except what one Crenshaw player told us on the phone tonight (he requested anonymity, and we can understand why):  "It was ugly," he said.  "It was horrible.  Coach West was really mad.   It was just awful."

So Horizon will go on to play in the semifinals on Friday at 9:00 p.m. at Ocean View.  Their opponent won't be determined until later, when the winner of the Mater Dei v. Pasadena game  (which was played today at 4:30 p.m. at Ocean View) takes on Redondo Union, which beat Ayala on Monday 74-70.

In the other half of the bracket, Compton played Westchester tonight at 6:00 p.m. and this was also a game for the ages.  Chris Osborne was playing well, as was Lou Wright, but the Comets just didn't have enough to hold off Compton and the Tarbabes, and the defending State Champion Division I team lost to what could be this year's Division II State Championship team.  Tito Maddox just put on a show at the end of the game, but the score was tight the hole way, and Compton only won by one point, 51-50.

Wow.

In the other half of the bracket, Ocean View, which beat El Modena on Monday by a score of 71-41, played in the other game in the winner's bracket at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Ocean View against Santa Barbara which beat Edison in the first round. We don't know what the final was in that one, but Ocean View was up at the half.  

Here's what we know about what happened yesterday (Monday) during some of the first round games: 

Crenshaw vs. AB Miller.  Amazing.  This was the first game of the day played at 4:20 p.m. at Mater Dei High School, and no one, we repeat no one, called in the score anywhere.  Not here, not to the LA Times, not to the Long Beach P-T, not to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, not to the Orange County Register, nowhere.  Zippo. Nada.  We couldn't have told you who won if we had wanted to yesterday evening, and believe me we wanted to.  But we now know that Crenshaw won, beating AB Miller by about 34 points according to our Crenshaw sources, by a score of about 92-58.  So that meant that AB Miller matched up in the losers bracket with Long Beach Jordan this afternoon at Mater Dei in the 3:00 p.m. game.

Also from Monday:

Horizon 73, Long Beach Jordan 71--A furious rally from a 10-point deficit with two minutes to go fell short for the Panthers, who lost to Horizon in the first round of the Tournament of Champions. Junior center Travon Bryant led Jordan with 23 points and 12 boards. Here's the quote from the P-T: "The Panthers will square off against A.B. Miller today at 3 p.m. at Mater Dei."  Something's wrong here.  

More Monday:

Compton 88, Fontana 66-- The Tarbabes, the seventh ranked team in the state, broke open a close game in the second quarter, outscoring the Steelers (2-1) 23-14 en route to winning a first round game at Ocean View High. The Tarbabes improved to 2-0 on the season.  Compton pulled away in the second quarter by playing good defense, and making key free-throws.  Compton was led by Tito Maddox (6'-4" Sr. PG) who scored 29 points and had seven rebounds, followed by Leroy Dawson (6'-1" Sr. SG) who scored 21 points and had 7 assists, Ellis Myles(6'-4" Jr. SF) and Terry Hosendove (6'-4" Sr SF) each with 11 points, Dony Legans (6'-1" Jr SG) with 2, Terry King with 4, and Jeremiah Thompson (6'-4" So PF) with 7.  Scott Anderson (6'-5" Sr. F) led Fontana (2-1) with 18 points and 12 rebounds before fouling out; Joseth Dawson (6'-2" Sr. SG) had 12 points, and Baron Baker (5'-10" Sr. PG) added 10. Michael Stephenson (5'-9" Jr. PG) added another 3 points, Jordan Walker (6'-6" Jr. PG/C) had 5, Mark Mancha (6'-1" So. SG) scored 3, and Aaron Gipson (5'-8" Fr. PG) had 7 points.

Fontana played today at 6:00 p.m. against Serra at Mater Dei High School in the losers bracket.  

Mater Dei 75, St. John Bosco 37--Michael Strawberry led a wave of Monarch scorers with 10 points as Mater Dei pounded the Braves in first
round action of the Tournament of Champions at Mater Dei. Others scoring for Mater Dei included Henderson with 7, Imran Sufi with 5, Derrick Mansell with 9, Porter with 6, Cedric Bozeman with 8, Steve Scoggin with 8,  Mike Bayer with 8,  Ryan Tancredi with 2, Christian McGuigan with 8, Erik Soderberg with 3, and Chris Mello with 1.   Mater Dei led in the first quarter 17-9, and then extended the lead to 42-16 at the half, outscoring St. John Bosco 25-17 in the second quarter.  Things only got worse in the third, as Mater Dei ran up 20 points but held St. John Bosco to only 4 points.   If there was a bright spot for Bosco, it was Lewie Helton who led the team with eight points. 

And this is what we got from the LA Times on the Ocean View v. El Modena game from Monday:

It was only the first game of the season, but Ocean View High boys basketball coach Jim Harris says that junior Jeremiah Bell has already grown leaps and bounds.  "He has come so far in his game in such a short period of time," Harris said of Bell, who turned in a dominating first half performance Monday afternoon, a performance which jump-started host Ocean View to a 70-41 rout of El Modena in the opening game of the 1998 Tournament of Champions. "He has really improved his foot work and is really getting off the floor a lot more quickly than he did all summer. It's a great tribute to his attitude and hard work." Bell scored eight of Ocean View's 10 first quarter points as the Seahawks opened up a 10-6 lead. The 6-foot-2 forward/center ended up with 12 points in the opening half as Ocean View rolled to a 32-21 lead at the intermission.

Ocean View, the defending CIF Southern Section Division III-AA champion, is without last year's dominating front court of Matt Kiemle, Jason Martini, Kevin Hanson, and David Hatch, a foursome lost to graduation.  But Bell stepped in nicely to fill some of that open space under the basket, while veterans Tony Dow, a senior guard and last year's Division III-AA player of the year, and guard/forward Casey Lawson, directed the Seahawk attack at both ends of the court.  Bell finished tied with teammate Torin Beelner for high-scoring honors with 16 points to go along with 11 rebounds.  Dow began his quest for repeat player of the year honors as his first outing resulted in an 11 points, 10 assists, 9 steals effort against the outmanned Vanguards.  El Modena, beginning a new season under first year coach Roger MacLachlin, returned four starters from last year's 12-16 squad. "As openers go, I thought we played hard, but we could have executed better," said Harris, who began his 21st season as coach of the Seahawks. "I liked some things we did, and we'll get better as the season progresses. I thought we applied nice defensive pressure, and because we're a very athletic team, I feel we'll also improve our play on the defensive end."

Ocean View began to find its groove after a mechanical-like opening quarter. The Seahawks turned up the defensive pressure in the third quarter to turn the game into a rout and advance to face the winner of Monday's late game between Edison and Santa Barbara, tonight at 7:30 p.m.  After the Vanguards had trimmed their deficit 32-23 in the opening minute of the third period, Lawson hit a short jumper, Dow came up with a steal at mid-court and went in for an uncontested dunk, Dow then stole El Modena's inbound pass and fed Rahshaw McAfee for a baseline jumper, and when Lawson and Torin Beeler combined on another steal, which led to a Beeler jumper, it completed a 9-0 Ocean View run which built the lead to 18, 41-23.

Jason Silleto's lay-in just before the buzzer gave Ocean View a 52-30 lead heading into the fourth quarter, which gave Harris the opportunity to play his entire roster.   "I don't know when or if it will happen again this season, but it was nice to be able to give everybody the chance to play," Harris added. Guard Joe Cortez topped El Modena, which faces the loser of
Monday's Edison/Santa Barbara match up tonight (7:30 p.m.) in consolation play at Mater Dei High, with eight points.

We'll have more results (hopefully) and more details tomorrow. Stay tuned.

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