DI313.htm

SoCal High School & Prep Report

CIF State Playoffs: Southern Region
Division I Semifinal Details & Results--(March 13, 1998)

Division I

Westchester 79, Clovis West 54

For Westchester, they will get to face the opponent they've always hoped they would face, or perhaps the one they feared the most, Artesia, whom they defeated by 10 points last month in the Artesia-Poly Winter Classic. For the Clovis West Eagle, the season has ended, perhaps not fittingly, in a rout.

Westchester came into this game at 28-3, won the semifinal game of the Division I Southern Regional by taking an 11-4 lead early in the first quarter, and then going on another 11-5 run at the end of quarter which they never relinquished. Westchester will now play Artesia (32-1), which won the other Division I semifinal game by a score of 67-54 over Glendora and its start Casey Jacobsen. The Division I championship game is scheduled for Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. at Pauley Pavilion. Westchester continued to increase its lead with a 19-point second quarter that gave the Comets a 41-28 halftime lead.

And while the running game worked all season long fo the Clovis team, trying to keep pace with top-seeded Westchester wasn't a very good idea. In the second half, Clovis West, which closes out it's season at 31-3 had almost no energy to make any kind of run, and not surprisingly they didn't. In fact, Westchester not only controlled the first half, they controlled the entire game, dominating on the boards, and simply outrunning Clovis.

Westchester Coach Ed Azzam credited his team's defense for the quick start:

"This is a team that averages 80 points a game, and tonight we came out and scored 54 in the first half. But the credit goes to our defense. When our defense creates scoring opportunities, we can be very good. And tonight I was very pleased with the defense," Azzam told Gabe Leon in a special to the Fresno Bee published today.

"We thought they would come out and try to slow the pace down, but they wanted to run with us," Westchester senior Tony Bland, who scored 10 of his game-high 16 points in the second quarter told the LA Times. "That just played into our hands and made it easier for us the whole night."

David Bluthenthal scored 16 points for Westchester, and Brandon Granville and C.J. Williams each scored nine points for the Comets. Brad Astin and Jason Bow led Clovis West with 11 points each.

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Artesia 64, Glendora 44

While Casey Jacobsen compiled the record for individual stats, Jason Kapono and Artesia compiled the more important statistic: They won the game. In what seemed at times to be a 5-on-1 basketball game, Artesia defeated Glendora (31-2) and the Tartans' Casey Jacobsen, 67-54, on Thursday night at Long Beach City College to advance to the CIF Division I Southern California regional final for the first time since 1993. The Pioneers will face Westchester (28-3) on Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion. The win was the 19th in a row for the Pioneers.

Glendora, the CIF Division 1A champion and seeded No. 3 in the Regional, didn't give up too easily against second-seeded Artesia, the Division 1AA champion. And that was largely due to Casey Jacobsen. Jacobsen, a 6'-6" shooting guard/small forward, who had been averaging 44 points per game in the playoffs, had a game-high 38 points and 11 rebounds, but Artesia still managed the win convincingly. But first the Pioneers had to push past the powerful effort of Jacobsen's first three quarters of the game. Jacobsen, a one-man show, scored all 13 of Glendora's points in the first quarter, 10 of 14 in the second, a mere seven of 17 in the third and eight of 10 in the fourth. Glendora's second-leading scorer was Chris Clark, who had seven points; no one else had more than three for the Tartans.

Artesia's depth and balance proved to be the answer for Jacobsen's outside shooting and slashing inside moves. The Pioneers, who led by just one point entering the fourth quarter, outscored Glendora, 22-10, in the final eight minutes. Glendora point guard Earl Sanchez, who had been out with a broken foot, made his first appearance in about six weeks in the first round game against Rancho Bernardo. But against a quicker team like Artesia, Sanchez was not very effective, and played only two minutes in the first quarter.

For three quarters, Glendora played almost even-up, basket-for-basket with Artesia. Artesia took an early 5-1 lead, but the Tartans served noticed they would not be blown out by taking a 13-11 lead at the end of the quarter. And while they managed to stay close during the first three quarters, in the fourth quarter it all came apart. Neither team led by more than four points through the first three, and it looked like the game would remain close when Jacobsen converted an alley-oop 15 seconds into the fourth to give the Tartans a 46-45 lead.

But then a 12-0 run by Artesia early in the fourth quarter broke the game open. Despite its lack of depth, Glendora took the lead with 7:47 left in the game when Jacobsen threw down the two-handed dunk off the alley-oop lob. It was the last time Glendora would score from the field for more than 4 minutes, and the last time the Tartans would score any points at all for almost another 7 minutes. Kapono sank two free throws to put Artesia back in front on its next possession, and little did anyone know that it would be the game's final lead change. Kapono's free throws began the decisive 12-0 run that included Jamal O'Quinn's 3-pointers, a steal and a driving layup by Murdock. O'Quinn's first three-pointer gave Artesia a 50-46 lead and his second gave the Pioneers a 55-46 advantage. O'Quinn and Murdock each scored 19 points for Artesia, whose only loss of the season was a 61-51 decision to Westchester in a tournament in December.

Glendora never recovered and never got closer than 10 points after Artesia's 12-0 run, which gave Artesia a 57-46 lead. Glendora couldn't get closer than 10 points after that. Jason Kapono added 14 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists. Murdock, whose defense was terrific, had seven steals and nine assists in addition to his 19 points.

Jacobsen and his teammates tried to step it up to keep Glendora close as Dominic Degrassi grabbed 12 rebounds, and Chris Clark scored seven of his nine points in the second half. But Artesia and junior Jason Kapono, to whom Jacobsen is often compared, were just too strong. "We felt confident in the second half that if we kept doing what we had been doing that we'd wear them down," Artesia Coach Wayne Merino told reporters from the Times and the Press-Telegram. "They don't play a lot of guys, so that was our thinking."

Jamal O'Quinn was not so charitable in describing Glendora: "(Glendora) is a one-man team," O'Quinn told reporters. "We've got five players." Jacobsen for his part acknowledged the same thing when he told reporters "We were just too tired and there was not enough depth. We were the underdogs. We were expected to lose."