cham v. loyola

SoCal High School & Prep Report

Game Notes: Chaminade Beats
Loyola With It's Long Bench--(January 23, 1998)

Chaminade has one of the longest and deepest benches in high school basketball. It actually fits, for a coach with stated aspirations to one day coach in college, to carry a college-size roster of 16 or so players. It doesn't always work for all the players, because of course only 5 at a time can play, but on Thursday night at Loyola, Chaminade proved that it's a good thing to be bringing all these guys to the game.

The reason for this conclusion was that Chaminade was forced to call upon it's bench because Chaminade's "star" players were just playing terribly. So instead of turning to it's Long (Scott Long that is) Chaminade instead turned to it's other "long". . . the long bench.

Even though Chaminade managed to easily win this one, 56-37, the Eagles should have won by far more. But even with a tepid win Thursday night at Loyola, Chaminade managed to climb into the driver's seat to claim sole possession of first place in the Mission League.

Chaminade is now 16-1 overall, having only lost to Simi Valley in December at the Simi Valley Invitational Tournament, and they are undefeated in Mission League, having beaten Harvard-Westlake last week, Notre Dame and now Loyola in the tougher league games. Chaminade is now also the top-ranked team in the region by The Times Poll. They are, somewhat inexplicably, the No. 3 team in the Daily News poll. They moved up to No. 2 in Division III-A in the CIF Southern Section coaches poll, and they managed to move into 13th place in the State of California according to Cal Hi Sports rankings. Simi, the team which beat them, but which lost to Newbury Park last week, dropped down to No. 18 in the Cal Hi poll.

But on Thursday night, they were playing like anything but a near-top or top rated team. With some major college recruiting services and scouts in the audience, including Clark Francis of Hoop Scoop and Joe Franciso (at least we were told he was there), it was all coach Jeff Young could do to keep from throwing up and getting sick at the way his team was playing.

How bad was it?

Sixteen turnovers, 13 of 24 free-throw shooting, and Chaminade, a team which usually out-rebounds its' opponents (for example last Friday night against Harvard Westlake, Chaminade outrebounded the Wolverines 55-13), could only muster 11 offensive rebounds in the game, and only a total of 25, which tied Loyola's 25 boards.

And consider this: Scott Long (6'-5" Sr. PF/C) who will attend the Naval Academy next year, fouled out in the fourth quarter. He scored five of Chaminade's first 13 points, then basically disappeared as he got into foul trouble.

But just to prove to Clark Francis that there was still a reason to attend this game, freshman center Scott Borchart (6'-9" Fr. C), played very well, scored consistently and rebounded well, and finished with a game-high 17 points and nine rebounds. Justin Beach (6'-6" Sr. SG/SF) also scored 12 points and point guard Cayce Cook, who looked to have recovered completely from the deep thigh bruise which kept him in agony in last Friday's matchup against Harvard-Westlake, had nine points, six assists and five steals.

Long's foul trouble caused him to finish with only seven points--12 below his league average. Long was called for his second foul late in the first quarter and thereafter played only a little, shuttling in and out of the game.

Fortunately for the Eagles, Long wasn't really missed. Chaminade led throughout the game. Loyola, which is now 13-6 overall and 4-1 in league play, and which also defeated Harvard-Westlake last week, came within a point once, 18-17, on a 10-foot jumper in the key by Gordon Wing with 3:30 left in the second period. But the Eagles went on a 9-2 scoring run to put the game out of reach.

Loyola, which made 13 of 49 shots, was outscored 14-5 in the third quarter, and made only one field goal. Chaminade went ahead, 41-24 at the end of the third. Chaminade's surging zone, with effective half court trapping, caused 17 Loyala turnovers. Loyola is an athletic team with decent size and shooting ability, managed to present some problems with their scoring attack. Chaminade basically got lucky that Loyola, ordinarily a fine shooting team, which has scored more than 80 points in four games this season, just were not hitting their shots.

Jeff Young told reporters after the game, "We got lucky with this one. Lucky for us, they just weren't hitting their shots like they usually do. I guess we got them on an off-night."

Beach finished with 12, Cook had 9, Long 7, Borchart 17, Rodriguez 3, and Justin Stewart had 8 for Chaminade

For Loyola, Mollins had 7, Mura 9, Hallman 7, McClenahan 4, Ewing 2, Meigs 2, and Archer 4 points.