SoCal High School & Prep Report

Chaminade Tournament Update:
First Round--(December 16,1997)

Yesterday was the first round of the Chaminade Prep Christmas Classic, played at Chaminade Prep in West Hills. There's been a ton of stuff written about Chaminade this year and their coach Jeff Young, some of it good, some of it not so good. We're just here to report on basketball, and Chaminade's got some great players. They're also having a good tournament and are featuring some fine local SoCal teams, even if the first round matchups do seem a bit lopsided.

In yesterday's first round games, host Chaminade beat Van Nuys by 25 points, 68 to 43 behind the stellar play of Scott Long who scored 8 points in the first quarter, and 14 points overall. Chaminade came out pressing early, and went up 15-0 with Long (6-5 Sr. PF/C) and freshman Scott Borchart (6'-9" Fr. F/C) leading. Borchart collected 13 points, 6 in the first quarter. Everyone got into the act for Chaminade, with Justin Beach (6'-6" Sr. SG/F) scoring 7 points, Justin Stewart (6'-2" Sr. PF) hitting for 6, Mike Kokorowski (6'-2" Sr. G) scoring 6, Nick Lawson (5'-10" Jr. PG) with 3, Chris Canoles (6'-3" Jr. F/PF) with 3, Josh Levy (6'-4" Jr. SG/G) had 3 points, JJ Todd ((6'-10" Jr. C) had 3, Robbie Tanouye (5-10 Jr. PG) with 2, and Ryan Chicon (6'-2" Sr. G/SF) with 2. Cayce Cook, Chaminade's star point guard apparently did not play (or didn't score), and the word is that he was out ill. But it's not like they needed him in this game anyway.

This game was never in doubt but Van Nuys never gave up, only losing the last two quarters scoring by a single point each quarter, 12-13 in the third, and 16-17 in the fourth. But it was the first half that just destroyed Van Nuys' chances, and they never quite recovered from the 15-0 blitz.

Van Nuys is a team in trouble. They are 0-6 on the season, and in need of a win. Any win. And it isn't like they don't have some guys who can play. Abe Morabbi (6'-2" Jr. PG/SG/F/C) had 17 points for Van Nuys yesterday, which is pretty impressive against Justin Beach and Scott Long. But Van Nuys struggled in the rest of it's game, and nobody else hit double digits. In fact, only one other player scored above 5, and that was Greg Jackson (6'-1" Sr. F), who had 7 points. The other scorers were Truong with 3, Keane with 2, Jharakhanian with 3, Daniels 3, Nava with 2, Jones with 2 and Bagabiong with 4.

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In other games played yesterday in the tournament, El Camino Real beat Marshall by 20 points, in another game which turned into a blowout in the first quarter. At the end of the first quarter the score was 13-4, and it never got any better. ECR led at the half 31-12, and in the second half, while ECR eased up a bit, they padded their lead by 3 in the third, and two more in the fourth, outscoring Marshall 20-17 in the third and 19-17 in the fourth to win by a final score of 68-48. Interestingly, for ECR, only two players scored more than 10: Hoke and Daniels each had 12. The rest of the scoring came from Samoza and Moss with 7 each, Reyes and Saad-Anthony with 6 each, McPherson and Nagapetyan with 4 each, Robertson with 8, and Kezzrian with 2 points.

Campbell Hall also played yesterday, losing to Malibu 68-59, despite a tremendous personal effort from Campbell Hall's point guard, Josh Glass who had a game high 25 points. This game was the closes of all those played and Campbell Hall was always in it up until the end. Except for the second quarter, when Malibu built their lead to 8 points, Campbell Hall was always within a point or two. At the end of the first quarter the score was 19-17 Malibu, but then Malibu went on a 19-11 run in the second quarter to open up a lead from which Campbell Hall never recovered.

Others scoring for Campbell Hall were Ronny Polk (Sr. 6-2 G/SF) with 12, Brandon Woodard (Jr. 6-3 F/PF) who had 11 points, Wolmack with 8, Popielinski with 2, and Larry Cole (Sr. 6-5 C), who only managed 1 point in the whole game.

Malibu had pretty balanced scoring, with Burley scoring 17, Fishburn with 15, Dexter with 11, Hill had 9 points, Walker with 7, Strock with 4, Strache had 2 points.

And in the first game of the day, between Rio Mesa and the Chaminade JV, we have no idea what happened. Anybody see this one? If so, send in your report.

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