la salle final montclair

SoCal High School & Prep Report

La Salle Tournament: Montclair Prep
Wins Title--(January 2, 1998)

Well, Temple City might have been on a roll up until the finals of the LaSalle/Temple City Tourney, and defying the rule that he who hosts must win the finals (well, we guess co-hosting just won't do it) Temple City lost to No. 9 (Tmes) or No. 10 (Daily News) ranked Montclair Prep of Van Nuys on Tuesday night, 86-68.

Montclair got to this game by just destroying El Monte 95-57 in the first round on Friday December 26, rolling over Reseda 67-41 on Saturday in the second round, and dominating Notre Dame 88-44 on Monday. We're not certain who TC beat in the first round, or the second, but we do know they beat a very strong Marshall team to get to the finals

This game was actually pretty close most of the way through the first half, and Montclair was actually losing 20-15 at the end of the first quarter. Montclair managed to tie the score 40-40 at halftime on the fine scoring of Michah Cohen and Rocky Steryo (6'-2" Sr SG), and in the third and fourth quarter, the Mounties just pulled away. Montclair scored 20 to TC's 12 in the third, and then outscored them 26 -16 in the fourth.

So Montclair just hammered another one home. Rocky Steryo had 20 points, and Micah Cohen (5'-10" Sr PG/SG), who also played for Montclair Coach Howard Abrams on this year's Team LA Maccabi 15-16 year old boys team, which won a bronze in Seattle this last summer, had his biggest game of the year, scoring 20 points. Jedediah Hall (6'-71/2" Sr PF/C) had 17 points. Cohen had just a phenomenal game, and demonstrated his speed and quickness, getting 7 steals and 6 assists in addition to his 20 points. Carlese Clark (5'-10" Sr. PG) had 12 points and 7 assists, while Geoff Hull (6'-2" Sr F) had 6 points. Kevin Bentley (6'-2" Sr SF/PF) had 4 points and Jules Thompson (6'-3" Sr F) had 5 points and 10 rebounds. Jed Hall played extremely well under the boards, and showed that he's got great potential to be a high D-1 player, pulling down 17 rebounds. Hey, Ben Braun, are you listening?

Temple City put on quite a show too, and two players alone combined for 54 of their 68 points. Both Josh Johnson (at least we think it was him and not brother Jason) and Eddie Copeland had 27 points each. Temple City had no other scorers in double figures and Ralph Baccera had 6, Chad Heng 4, Ryan Salcido 2, and Li 2.

According to our friends who saw this one, you simply had to see it to believe Cohen's performance. He's a very quick, intense player, with great hops, who transferred to Montclair a few years ago from Crossroads, figuring that he'd get a whole lot more playing time there than he would behind Baron Davis playing for Darryl Roper. He's not been scoring nearly as much this season as he's capable of doing, and we're just glad that before the regular season begins, he had a performance like this one. Congratulations Micah.

Rocky Steryo was, not surprisingly chosen as the Tournament MVP, but we think Cohen at least deserved to be named the Game MVP for his performance in this one.

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In the Third Place Game, Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks lost to Pasadena Marshall 61-58 on the fine shooting of Mackey and Alexander of Marshall, both of whom had 17 points, and Hollifield with 14. For Notre Dame, Murray had 6, Brfeaster 3, Ward 12, Joe Donnelly only had 6, Pearson had 10 points, Johnson had 3, and Williams was the high scorer with 16 points. With the loss, Notre Dame drops to 7-5 on the year. If we had to pick the Mission league right about now, that is if someone held a gun to our head, we pick it in this order: Chaminade, H-W, Crespi, Loyola, and then the field gets a bit murky, with Notre Dame, Alemany, and St. Francis all sort of blending together in one amorphous mass, but in that pack, we'd have to put Notre Dame at the top of the bottom, just because they're so athletic. Yeah, we know that a lot of people will scream at us for these picks, but so what. It's what we think.