sylmar loses to St. Mary's day one

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Reebok Holiday Prep Classic: Sylmar Loses
To St. Mary's 76-53--(Dec. 18, 1999)

Silver Cup Game: Game No. 8 Sylmar v. St. Mary's (Arizona) at Green Valley, Auxiliary Gym

Whoa. . . SoCal teams are 0-4 so far in the first round games played up until now, and they're continuing to drop like flies. Next victim: Sylmar, which dropped a first round game to St. Mary's, a team from Phoenix, Arizona, which featured James and Jason Fontenet, and big man Channing Frye. As we suspected might happen, Sylmar really had no answer for these guys, either from the field shooting or on the boards.

St. Mary's was led by James Fontenet, who was also the MVP of the game, with 23 points, and he had impressive stats, hitting 5 three pointers out of 7, and going 9-14 overall from the field. He also had a total of 5 rebounds and only 3 turnovers in 23 minutes of play. Jason had 14 points and 4 assists (but 5 turnovers) in 25 minutes of play, shooting 4-10 from the field, 2-5 from three point range and 4-6 from the line. He also had 4 rebounds. Channing Frye just killed Sylmar inside, getting 12 rebounds (4 offensive, 8 defensive) and he finished with 11 points. Tarek Abdala, another starter also had 10 points. Nathaniel Ballesteros, started the game, but only played 9:48 and didn't score for St. Mary's. Other scorers were Levi Lopez with 5, Mark Martinez with 7, Peter Kostyua with 1, Kenny White 2, and Mayberry with 3.

Sylmar's woes began with their abysmal field goal shooting. In the first half they went 8-25 (32%) and in the second half it got worse as they went 11 for 40 (27.5%), and anyone will tell you that you'd better have another big stat to make up for those kind of shooting percentages; overall, the team only shot 29% for the game. Sylmar was cold and never got hot, as they trailed 43-26 at the half, and then were outscored 33-27 in the second half. There were other telling stats: St. Mary's managed to score 21 times off of turnovers, while Sylmar converted just 11 times. The Spartans' three point shooting wasn't all that bad, at 46% for the game (6-13), but from the line they shot only 42.9% (9-21), and those are Shaq-like numbers which won't win any games. St. Mary's outrebounded Sylmar 51-43, and in general just managed to score more (which is "generally" how games are won, speaking generally. . . .).

Individually, Sylmar only had one player in double figures: John Valdez had 12 points on 4-10 shooting from the field, 2-5 from three point range and 2-2 from the line. he had 3 turnovers and two steals. The rest of the team didn't really have terribly impressive individual stats: Jason Adams had 2 points; Brandon Robinson had 5 points in 20 minutes on 2-9 shooting, 1-2 from three-point range and 0-2 from the line. Brandon also had 2 steals. Earnest Williams had 9 points, also shooting 2-9 from the field and 5-7 from the line. Sal Ochoa had 3 points (1-2 from three); Darrell Penn didn't score, while Fernando Barreda had 3 points in 13 minutes. Carlos Estrada, a starter, didn't score and played 11 minutes. Chris Slade, a returning player from last year, had 0 points in 7 minutes, shooting 0-2 from the field; George O'Garro shot 4-12 from the field, had 3 rebounds, and 8 points in 21 minutes. Chris Stewart had 7 points (3-6 from the field). Branden Lasley had 2 points (1-5 from the field), Luis Solis and Jeff Morse didn't score.

Sylmar will next play South Laurel, which lost in the first game of the day in the Silver Cup to Palo Verde. The next Sylmar game will be on Monday at 10:30 a.m. in the Green Valley Auxiliary gym.

See you there.