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SoCal High School & Prep Report

Southern Section Playoffs: Division V-AA
Pacific Hills Defeats Santa Clara 82-76 For Title--(March 8, 1998)

We get letters at SoCalHoops. Oh, do we get letters.

We're not going to print them here, nor our responses to some of them, but we've gotten several e-mails in the past few days asking, inquiring, some might even say DEMANDING, that we write about the Pacific Hills Bruins. We'd like to, really we would, but we just don't know that much about them, and no one else apparently does either. We've been criticized, and YELLED AT for not finding out about each of their players, commenting on their playing tendencies, how many points they score, averages, and other items of interest. Oh yeah, we even got one criticizing us for not knowing the name of the coach at Pacific Hills.

Gimme a break.

The problem is, we just don't have all the information at the touch of a button. Gathering player profiles, coach interviews, game reports and the like, is a season long process. It's not our fault that the newspapers didn't cover Pacific Hills. It's not our fault that the school didn't print a roster for the media at the semifinal game on Tuesday, and we are not clairvoyant, despite what some may think, and thus we can't divine this information. We've only got a small crew writing and scouting for us, and we really try to cover as much of SoCal Hoops as we can, but if a school doesn't provide the info, and the papers don't have it either, and we're not hearing about this or that great team, how are we supposed to have the information? You folks from Pacific Hills think you're being snubbed? Hey, don't feel so bad. When we first got started this season, we had every intention of covering not only the boys' hoops in SoCal, but also the girls' teams as well. However, we soon learned that, at least for this first season of SoCalHoops, was just too daunting a task. Maybe next season, or maybe we'll gradually be able to work into it with the Regional and State playoffs. We're not making any promises, but we may do it yet. We do want to offer our sincere congratulations to all the girls teams who won Friday and Saturday. And we also want to send a personal congratulations to Brian Taylor: Hey BT Express, way to go. Your Harvard-Westlake Girls' team won a Southern Section Division III-A Championship on Friday night. Even if the guys couldn't three-peat, we knew you could win it.

But back to Pacific Hills: Other than what we saw the other night in the semifinals against Montclair, we really don't know a lot about this team or it's players, and we'd be hard pressed to tell you the coach's last name, except that we got a letter from his brother, who has the last name of "Bobich" and since they're brothers, this is a pretty good clue for us that Pacific's Coach is named Bobich.

So what else do we know about Pacific? We know that they are a quick, scrappy team, which can hold up under pressure, including three overtimes; that they are led by a three-guard rotation of Brandon Owens, Ryan Abrahams and Charles Pagan; that they've got forward Conrad Adamczak who plays as well as any small forward we've seen this year, and who has one of the quickest turnaround drop steps of any 6'-5" front man this year; that they've got Rodney Harry, Pacific's 6'-5' Anthony Garrison/ Alex Holmes look-alike. Harry is just a huge space-eater of a player, with decent hands, who can shoot and defend, and for a guy who must weigh in at somewhere around 240 lbs, he's pretty mobile. There are a bunch of bench players, but we really didn't get too good a chance to analyze their games in any meaningful way, given the frantic pace of the triple overtime game last Tuesday.

Oh, we also learned from the coach's brother that this is Pacific's "fifth championship in six years." We haven't verified the accuracy of that statement, but that's what the coach's brother says.

Well, we would have like to have written more about this team, and maybe during the State Southern Regional Playoffs we'll have a chance to do just that, but on Friday night, as Santa Clara played Pacific for the Championship in Irvine at the UCI Bren Events Center, we were at the LA Sports Arena getting ready for the Westchester-Manual City Section game, watching as the girls of Narbonne defeated Palisades for the Girls' City Section 4-A Championship.

Because we couldn't be in two places at once, we thought we'd pass along to you this report from the LA Times. Just so you don't think we're the only ones who don't know a lot about Pacific, it seems none of the papers do either. We'd pass along the Daily News story on the game, but that would just be overkill. Here's the Times' story (again, remember "Fair Use". This is for educational purposes, and we make no money, zero, nada, zilch, from this site. . . in fact it's starting to cost a bundle with all the web traffic we're getting, but that's another story). The article if you please:

Never mind Santa Clara High swingman Nick Jones' left foot. The Saints' season-long Achilles' heel was what really hurt.

Santa Clara battled back from an 11-point third-quarter deficit to force overtime, but like many of their free throws, the Saints fell short in an 82-76 loss to Pacific Hills in the Southern Section Division V-AA boys' basketball championship Friday at the Bren Events Center.

"One game we make 'em and the next one we don't," said Santa Clara center Ryan McGill, who missed two free throws with 47 seconds left in regulation and the Saints trailing, 67-65. "It's really frustrating."

McGill wasn't the only Santa Clara player to miss from the line in the closing seconds of regulation. B.J. Ward, who had 34 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, missed one of two free throws with 17 seconds left. The Saints (14-13) made 11 of 26 free throws in the game. Pacific Hills (24-7) was 16 for 30.

"Free throws and turnovers cost us the game," said Ward, who made 15 of 22 shots and four of eight free throws. "It was too just many mistakes." Poor free-throw shooting was a contributing factor in several Santa Clara losses this season. But this defeat proved the most painful.

"I really wanted to get this championship," Ward said. Despite the poor shooting and 18 turnovers, the defending-champion Saints were within range of their 15th crown in 17 title-game appearances, thanks mostly to Ward and Jones. They combined to score all 25 of Santa Clara's points in the fourth quarter, the final 33 points in regulation, and 36 of the Saints' last 41 points.

"These two were outstanding," Santa Clara Coach Lou Cvijanovich said of the Saints' two junior standouts. "I just wish our other three guys had showed up too. Basketball is not a two-man game."

Jones, who missed 20 games this season because of a broken left foot, was outstanding in the fourth quarter. He scored 17 of his 25 points in the final quarter, including the shot that sent the game into overtime.

Conrad Adamczak, who had 27 points and eight rebounds for Pacific Hills, sank one of two free throws with 10 seconds left to make it 68-66.

But Jones drove through the lane and scored on a finger-roll with 1.3 seconds left. "I realized this could be it," Jones said. That was nearly it for the Saints, who were outshot, outrebounded and outplayed in overtime.

Adamczak had five points in overtime and Charles Pagan scored four his five points and grabbed three rebounds for Pacific Hills. The fourth-seeded Bruins won in overtime for the second consecutive game. Pacific Hills knocked off top-seeded Montclair Prep, 83-82, in triple overtime in the semifinals.

"We felt confident," Adamczak said. "We were just saying, 'Here we go again.' But we were comfortable in that situation."