DI311.htm

SoCal High School & Prep Report

CIF State Playoffs: Southern Region
Division I First Round Games--(March 11, 1998)

Southern California vs. Northern California Champions
Saturday 3/21
ARCO Arena, Sacramento, 8:00 p.m.

As a reminder, we'll keep the plug for the State Finals at the top of each of the reports for the respective regions. Last night, Westchester won, beating Long Beach Poly in a game which apparently was moved at the last minute to Southwest LA College without any advance notice. We apologize to anyone who showed up at Westchester, but as with the LAUSD schedules, it seems we need to issue a caveat: Check the papers, call the schools involved before you drive to where you (or we) think the game is going to be. While we're pretty sure that the finals won't be moved from Pauley (or the Pyramid in other divisions), we make no guarantees that what we get from the CIF is accurate or even reliable. Really, check with the school or with the CIF's Los Angeles Office before making the drive if you really are in doubt.

Other winners last night were Clovis West beating Manual Arts and we still want to know what happened. No report, no box, nothing, either from the Bakersfield or Fresno sources or from the here in LA. Artesia won and so did Glendora. Here's what happened.

Division I

Westchester 67, Long Beach Poly 51

Tuesday night at Los Angeles Southwest College, where Westchester defeated Long Beach Poly, 67-51, in the first round of the Division I Southern California regional of the state boys' basketball tournament. Westchester (27-3) will play Clovis West, an 82-68 winner Tuesday over Manual Arts, in the semifinals Thursday. The winner advances to the championship game Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion. The regional champion will play the Northern California titlist in the state championship game March 21 at Arco Arena in Sacramento. Poly finishes at 26-8.

Poly controlled the game and the tempo throughout the first half, and trailed by only one point 28-27 at the half. Westchester just seemed to sleepwalk through the first half, and to those who saw it, the game had shades of "loss to Dominguez" from the MLK weekened written all over it. That is, until coach Ed Azzam got the Comets into the locker room and woke them up.

"The coaches told us at halftime that we needed to pick up our defensive effort," said Westchester's CJ Williams to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. Williams scored eight points and pressured the Jackrabbit guards into several turnovers. "If we play defense, we can beat anybody."

Then the win actually occurred during 5 1/2 minutes of a third quarter blitz. Westchester just exploded on offense, and smothered Poly on defense as they went 15-0 on a second-half charge in which Poly didn't score at all for almost six minutes. In all, in the third quarter, Poly only scored twice. "We stopped executing," in the view of Poly coach Ron Palmer.

In the third, Albert Miller scored off a fastbreak 27 seconds into the period. Twenty seconds later David Bluthenthal stole a pass just short of the halfcourt line and dribbled in all alone for the slam dunk. Poly called a timeout, but it really had no effect as on the next possession the Comet's Tony Bland, bound for Syracuse, scored easily over Poly's Ricky Anderson, bound for Arizona. C.J. Williams came right back also with a 3-pointer to put the Comets up by ten points, 37-27. But it wasn't over by a longshot: Miller hit one of two free throws. He then got loose on a fastbreak off a Poly turnover and scored. Brandon Granville, Vanderbilt-bound next year, hit a 3-pointer, to complete the 15-0 run. Finally, Keyon Cooley scored on an assist from Anderson, but with only 2 minutes remaining in the third. Wesley Stokes, again proving the early season scouts wrong who said he had no perimeter or shooting game, followed with a long jumper, Poly's only other score in the third. Westchester's Lou Wright then scored with 1:23 left in the quarter to give the Comets a 14-point lead, 45-31 at the end of the third.

Bluthenthal scored the Comets' first seven points of the fourth quarter as Westchester increased its lead to 52-33. Chris Williams' jump shot with 5:50 left gave Westchester a 21-point lead, its largest of the night.

Westchester Coach Ed Azzam told the Press-Telegram reporter that his team needs to learn to play hard from the start. "You can't just go through the motions, especially defensively, as you get deeper into this tournament," Azzam said. "In the first half, it looked like we didn't even want to be here. If I knew what it was that was causing our guys to play that way in the first half, I wouldn't wait until the third quarter to fix it. We need to start playing a good game for four quarters. And we need to start doing that on Thursday."

For Poly, it was a complete disaster. "When you don't do what you're supposed to do, that's the result you get. The first five minutes of that third quarter Ricky Anderson never touched the ball. Five guys have to touch the ball and they didn't," said Poly coach Palmer. Mike McIntyre led Poly with 22 points, including five 3-pointers on eight attempts. Anderson scored 10 points, eight in the first half, and led with 10 rebounds. Others scoring for Poly were Sean Anderson with 4, Stokes with 3, Cooley with 4, Lee 4, and Diggs 4.

Westchester scoring was led by Bluthenthal with 20 points; others scoring were Tony Bland 10, C.J. Williams with 5, Granville 10, Miller 11, Lou Wright 3, Eric Knight with 6, and Mackenzie Dent with 2.

Clovis West 82, Manual Arts 68

Unbelievably, we haven't been able to get any details of this game. Not a box score, no stories, and no reports from anyone who saw it. We'll keep hunting for details. At least we know who won and who lost.

**Update: Just checked over at Michael Miller's West Coast Hoops, and he's got an article up from "Henkelmanns Of Clovis", and they put up the box score; here it is:

Manual Arts (25-6) 15 18 21 14--- 68
Clovis West (31-2) 19 23 21 19--- 82

Manual Arts: Tomas Spain 4, Mario Roberts 2, Curtis Millage 6, Daylem Adewole 2, Farrel McKay 2, Deon Washington 2, Brandon Moorer 2, Cuentin Witherspoon 13, Ronald Cass 9, Ricky Duff 16, Larry Dillingham 4, Otis Belisle 6.

Clovis West: Mike McDonald 3, Ash Knowlton 7, Lester Williams 18, Chris Hernandez 12, Derek Henkelmann 5, Joe Aiello 15, Brad Astin 18, Brad Hertel 3, Dion Aye 1.

If accurate, it looks like just about the entire team for Manual scored at some point in this one. Still looking for more detail. If you've got it send it in.

Glendora 63, Rancho Bernardo 59

Earl Sanchez is back for Glendora High School. The senior guard and team leader played for the first time in seven weeks, and the the Tartans survived the win over a tough San Diego Rancho Bernardo team to advance. Sanchez, still recovering from a fractured bone in his foot, scored 10 points, including a key four-point play to help the visiting Tartans escape with a 63-59 victory before an overflow crowd of 2,000-plus at Rancho Bernardo. The Tartans advance to Thursday's Southern Regional semifinal game at Artesia, which beat Pacific Tuesday.

The Broncos (27-8), the CIF San Diego Section Division 1 champions, opened a 26-18 lead after one quarter. Rivera scored 20 points in the first half to help them to a 38-35 lead. Glendora's Casey Jacobsen, who averaged 44.2 points per game in the CIF Division 1A playoffs, "only" scored 24 points Tuesday night. But he was also responsible for several critically important shots during the fourth quarter, including a j at the top of the key with 14.3 seconds left that put the Tartans ahead, 63-59. Prior to that, Glendora, now 31-1 on the season, had led by as many as seven points twice in the fourth quarter, but Rancho Bernardo had closed the gap in the final minute-and-a-half.

Casey Jacobsen scored nine of his 24 points in the fourth quarter, including a 3-pointer to open the period that drew Glendora even, 49-49. Chris Clark, who scored 15 points, followed with a basket in the lane to give the Tartans their first lead of the game, 51-49, with 5:21 to play. Rei Rivera scored in transition to tie the score before Sanchez hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key and was fouled by Askins. Sanchez made the free throw to give Glendora a 55-51 lead with 4:54 left. Rivera, who scored 30 points for RB, manged to pull down an offensive rebound and score, and then and Marques Askins scored off a fast break transition basket after Sanchez missed a three pointer to bring RB within two points with less than 1:30 to play, 61-59. But then RB's Jeff Fletcher, who finished with 12 points and played great guarding Jacobsen most of the night, turned the ball over with 47.7 seconds in the game, after being called for traveling. Glendora then called time out with 26 seconds on the game clock and 14 seconds on the shot clock to set up Jacobsen's winning shot.

"They're a great team," Glendora coach Mike LeDuc told reporters. "The key to this game was that we managed to stay calm, especially after being down at the half."

Artesia 85, San Bernardino Pacific 62

Artesia came out swining in this one, going on runs of 12-0 and 15-0 in the game's first nine minutes. That helped to build a 24-point lead in the first half, and Artesia cruised to an 85-62 win over visiting Pacific of San Bernardino on Tuesday night. The Pioneers (32-1), trying to win their fourth state title overall, but the first one in the last five years, will play Glendora on Thursday night, at a location to be determined: It is rumored to be either at home or at Long Beach City College. As soon as we know, we'll have the information for our friend Leon, so that he doesn't get sidetracked again. :-).

Pacific finishes it's seasson at 22-10, and despite a great game, the Pirates never got closer than 14 points after the first quarter. Artesia's led at one point by 27 points halfway through the third. The huge first quarter lead seemed to cause Pacific to fall apart. Just 3:06 into the game, down 16-4 after Artesia's 12-0 run, Pacific coach Scott Smith called a timeout, and yelled at his players so loud almost everyone in the gym could hear it. Thereafter, Chaun Ballard and Mike Hall began, and even confronted each other, with Ballard shoving Hall in the chest. Ballard ultimately refocused, and had 15 points in the game.

Junior Jason Kapono, who had been ill just before the CIF Southern Section finals, showed no signs of slowing down, leading Artesia with 21 points and 14 rebounds. Ballard and James Burries with 12 were the only Pacific players in double figures. Artesia in contrast, had five players in double digits: Kapono with 21, Jamal O'Quinn 17, James Murdock 13, Jack Martinez 12 and Apolinar Fernandez with 12. Kapono also managed eight assists, Martinez had five blocked shots and 13 rebounds, and Murdock had eight assists and four steals. While the lead was insurmountable, Artesia got a little sloppy during the second quarter, and they were outscored, 19-14, and then Pacific managed to play them virtually even in the fourth quarter, losing that period by only two 19-21. But with the 31-11 first quarter pasting, and then losing the third quarter in which they were outscored 19-13, it was too much to muster a comeback.

The final scoring for Pacific was Ballard with 15, Smith 8, Huff 8, Clark 3, Tossetti 8, Burries 12; Weber 6, and Harbert 2. For Artesia, Murdock had 13, Willie Alford 3, Apolinar Fernandez 12, Andre Hazel 2, Jason Kapono 21, Young Im 2, Hamilton 3; Jamal O'Quinn 17, and Jack Martinez 12.