LA Baptist finals

SoCal High School & Prep Report

LA Baptist Tournament: Finally,
It's Over. Brentwood Wins--(January 4, 1998)

Despite the fact that Frank Vasquez of L.A. Baptist High managed to score 44 points in the championship game of the L.A. Baptist boys' basketball tournament on Saturday night, it wasn't enough, as Brentwood won, 82-75, principally by just dominating the offensive boards, and by outshooting Baptist, as a team. And yet another team defies the rule that the team hosting a tournament must win the finals; only Eagle Rock, Bell-Jeff and now LA Baptist, if we recall correctly, failed to win their tourneys. Must be something about teams which have one player who scores just a ton.

And indeed that was a problem for Baptist, getting others on the scoreboard, that is. Despite Vasquez' shooting clinic, only one other L.A. Baptist player scored in double figures, and that was Norris with 14. The next highest scorer (Ellis) had only 7, and then only four others scored, Craig with 1 point, Lpez with 1, Acuna with 2, and Bauer with 4 points.

LA Baptist dropped to 5-6 on the year, while Brentwood improved to 10-2. Brentwood jumped out early and easily controlled the first half of the game, leading 19-12 at the end of the first quarter, and then outscoring Baptist 21-16 in the second quarter to take a 40-28 lead at the half. In the third quarter, Baptist managed to make up 5 of those 12 points, and trailed by only 7 at the end of the third, 58-51. In the fourth quarter though, the best Baptist could do was to play Brentwood even, and each team scored 24 points in the final quarter. In a span of five minutes though, LAB had trimmed what had been a substantial 12 point deficit again which Brentwood managed to run up during the third quarter again, to a three point game at with a little more than a minute remaining, again on the shooting of Vasquez. But then Brentwood scored four points quick points again after coming up with the offensive rebounds on two missed foul shots. In fact, the final 8 points of the game for Brentwood were scored off of rebounds recovered off of missed free throws, first by Jesse Bronner scoring off of a miss by Steve Young, and then by Stanley Miller scoring off the miss by John Praw. Vasquez (5'-10" Sr. PG/SG) scored 19 of his 44 points in the fourth quarter, and made 80% of L.A. Baptist's 24 total points in the fourth quarter, including 10 of their last 12. He was 13 of 25 from the field, including nine of 18 from three-point range. LA Baptist's center, Evan Regenstreif, went scoreless in the game. Vasquez also had 8 steals in the game.

Brentwood on the other hand, had pretty balanced scoring. D. Bradley had 8, Miller scored 20, Ingram had 12, Nishimura had 5, B. Bradley had 6, Latham had 2, Henry had 3, Bronner scored 8 points, Praw had 7, Young had 5, and Rodgers had 6.

Congratulations to the LA Baptist New Year's Tournament 1997-98 Champs, Brentwood.

In the third place game, Fillmore beat Alemany 71-69. Jesus Jasso hit on a layup with a little more than a minute left to play to give Fillmore the lead at 70-69 and then Dago Pantosa added another point for insurance on a free throw with 35 seconds remaining to give Fillmore the win. Jasso scored 26 points for Fillmore, which improved to 9-4, and Pantosa had 16. Mario Galvez added another 14 for Fillmore. Alex Valasquez scored 16 points for Alemany, which dropped to .500 on the year (6-6). Alemany still had one shot left after Pantosa's free throw, but turned the ball over before they could get a shot off, with just two seconds left on the clock.

In the Consolation Championship (Fifth Place), Carpinteria beat Paraclete 59-54, as Chris Redfield hit a three-point shot with a little over a minute remaining to break a 54-54 tie, and put Carpinteria up 57-54. Redfield had 12 points for the Warriors (6-5). Glenn Jones and Dave Brown each had 13 points for Paraclete, which dropped to 1-8.

Finally, in the Seventh Place Game, or the third place game in the Consolation bracket (take your pick, but consolation third sounds a whole lot better), St. Bonaventure just hammered St. Genevieve 73-43. Anthony Duplessie scored 21 points and had 10 rebounds for St. Bonaventure while Michael Emald added 14, to give the Seraphs their second victory of the season over the Valiants, and improve their record to 8-5 on the year.

Ok, so now let's get on with the regular season (which has already started for a lot of teams). We'll be bringing you highlights of selected games, players and teams throughout the season and into the playoffs. And, we'll also be getting back to our local college coverage now that the high school madness is settling back down a bit, into the regular weekly grind.

Again, Congratulations to all the players, coaches, and folks who made this tournament possible, and also congratulations to the Highland Girls' team, which defeated Paraclete's girls, 37-33 for the Tournament Championship in the girls division. See, we're getting there. Slowly but surely. Just like in the WNBA and ABL.