redon305

SoCal High School & Prep Report

Southern Section Playoffs: Division II-A
Redondo Defeats Muir 55-53--(March 5, 1998)

For the first time in 55 seasons, the Redondo Seahawks are in a CIF title game. They made it there by beating Muir, but almost blew a four point lead with only 25 seconds remaining.

Muir held the lead in this one at the half, 27-24 as both teams battled tenaciously. Nate Johnson hit a three pointer with 2:29 to play in the second quarter, and then no one scored after that in the first half. But in the second half, Tyler Hoffman of Redondo came out smoking, seemingly forgetting his miserable 0-4 first half, and he hit three threes and a field goal--all in the third quarter-- to give Redondo a 43-34 lead.

Redondo had twice held a lead at nine points in the fourth quarter, but relaxed a bit when Muir's John Parker missed a five foot shot in the closing moments of the game which would have tied the score. Instead, Muir's season is over at 23-7 and Redondo moves on to the final against Dominguez, which has not lost a Southern Section playoff game since 1994 and has not lost a non-championship playoff game since 1992. A pretty daunting task for the Seahawks, but they may be up to the challenge.

Redondo's sphomore center Andrew Zahn, who finished with a game high 21 points, made a layup under the basket on an assist from Marcus Moore with only 25 seconds remaining, to bring the score to 55-53. But then Parker hit a another shot coming off a rebound with only four seconds to cut the Redondo leat to two points. And then Redon's Levi Stauffer was called for a five-second "closely guarded" violation, a tacky call at the end of a game in our opinion, but nevertheless, the ref's turned the ball over to Muir with the opportunity to win or tie the game with only a few seconds remaining.

Muir tried to inbound the ball in the lane, but it was a loose ball, eventually recovered by Parker, who got a shot off that just missed. Bzzzz. Game, set, match. Redondo wins, Muir loses.

For Redondo, Morris had 4 points, Hoffman 11, Moore 8, Zahn 21, Stauffer 4, Hunt 7, including one three pointer. For Muir, the scoring was done by Washington with 9, Backhoom with 6, Nate Johnson with 13, John Parker with 12, rowe with 8, and House with 5, including one three. As mentioned above, Johnson had three three-pointers for Muir.

The final will be at the Pond on Saturday at 2:45 pm. Don't miss it. We've also heard that it will be broadcast on Fox Sports West 2. We'll have the time and details about the broadcast later. And we're still waiting for word directly from Jim Neilsen about what he intends to do to try to stop Prince; it seems to us that the easy call is Zahn on Chandler; but what to do about Prince and Willie Hurst. . . hmmm. We'll have our own preview of the game in a little while.

Stay tuned.