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SoCal High School & Prep Report

City Section Playoffs: You Gotta Get Through
Westchester To Be The Best--(February 27, 1998)

Willie West told me after the game, "You've got to play the best to be the best. We just played them a week early."

Ed Azzam agreed. "If we'd played this game next week, we could have packed the Sports Arena."

As it was, 6,000 screaming, partisan fans, about half wearing blue and the other half in red, faced off in the Cal State Dominguez gym for what could have been, should have been the City Championship in Division 4-A.

But, as Ed Azzam said, "Crenshaw screwed it up by losing to Los Angeles. Don't blame the guys who did the seeding, they had to do it because Crenshaw lost that game during the regular season. Otherwise, we'd have seen them at the Sports Arena."

Even though it wasn't 16,000 people, it might as well have been, as Westchester just dominated defending City Champion and defending State Champion Crenshaw, 93-78.

15 points is a lot in a game like this. And, I swear to God, there were only four legitimate field goals during the entire game, two by Brandon Hawkins, one from Eric Knight, and one in the first half (2nd quarter) by Lou Wright from the top of the key. All the other points were off of layups, put-backs off of missed shots, point blank shots from 3' in or less, or free-throws. And there were just a ton of free throws in this game. In the first half alone, Crenshaw had 12 team fouls, and Anthony Garrison had three of them personall as did Ryan Sims.

Azzam started the usual five:

David Bluthenthal (6'-7" Sr. C/F)
CJ Williams (6'-1" Sr. G)
Albert Miller (6'-3" Sr. F)
Chris Osborne (6'-9" Jr. C)
Brandon Granville (5'-10 Sr. PG)

Willie West started:

EJ Harris (6'-2" So. G)
Brandon Hawkins (6'-2" Sr. G)
Donte Barrett (6'-2" Sr. G/F)
Ryan Sims (6'-9" Jr. C)
Anthony Garrison (6'-4" Sr. F)

Crenshaw struck first off the tip, as Hawkins laid the ball in and then Crenshaw put on it's vaunted 2-2-1 press, which was quickly and efficiently broken by Granville who passed back door to David B, who put on the first of his many slam dunks. The teams kept pressing each other, and clearly both CJ and Granville were too fast and slippery for EJ and Donte Barrett, and even for Jonathon Stokes who came in to spell Donte and play the backcourt with Harris.

It started to become apparent that even as Crenshaw was leading 16-12 with only 4:13 left to play, that Westchester was faster, more disciplined, and their guard play was smoother, while Shaw was more forced. EJ has a long way to go, and in fact he's got two more years to get there, but by the time he's a senior he may be as polished and accomplished as Granville. And coincidentally, after Hemsley slammed one of his own, the game had to be stopped for 10 minutes while the basket, which had been knocked askew, was adjusted, and then eventually replaced. This kind of thing should definitely not happen in a game like this.

It's pretty late now, so we won't do our usual blow by blow recount of the game, at least not tonight. We'll save that for Jason Day's report, as both he and I were there, along with Gary Klein of the LA Times and the guy from the Daily Breeze, and those Fox Sports West TV guys. Suffice it to say though, David Bluthenthal was virtually unstoppable, scoring 31 points. Tony Bland had 15. Brandon Granville had 8 points and at least 17 assists we counted. And "Sweet" Lou Wright had 10 points. I'm not sure how many points Albert Miller had, but he did foul out with 4:19 left to play in the game. And between Chris Osborne and Bluthenthal, Westchester just dominated the boards. Bluthenthal had 18 rebounds, and Osborne 13. Bluthenthal was, according to Westchester Comets coach Ed Azzam "almost 100% tonight", and we shudder to think just how well he'll play when he is 100%. Bluthenthal had 4 steals, and at least 5 alley-oop slams off of unbelievably quick, pretty and long Brandon Granville passes right over the top of at least three and sometimes four Crenshaw defenders. Granville was everywhere, a one-man swarm on defense, and flashing and dancing on offense, slashing, no-look passing and just creating and controlling the tempo, always pushing the ball and taking guys off the dribble. He's just a pelasure to watch and he had the crowd oohing and ahhing most of the night, while Bluthenthal had them hooting and hollering whenever he'd dunk.

Cresnshaw played well, but just not well enough. At the half the score was 47-32, and at the end of the third, it was 70-56. It never got closer than 13 in the entire second half. By the fourth quarter, West pulled most of his starters except for EJ, and the game was really over at 88-71.

What a game. We can't wait to find out who won the Fremont-Manual game. See you all at the Sports Arena next week for the finals.