Fairfax, Redondo take different title game routes

• Tweet

• Tweet

SAN DIEGO – The L.A. Fairfax and Redondo Beach Redondo high teams took remarkably different routes to Tuesday night’s 8 o’clock championship game in the National Division of the 25^th Under Armour Holiday Classic at Torrey Pines High.

The Fairfax Lions – heavily favored to win the L.A. City championship in March – got 25 points from senior reserve Lorne Currie and was pretty much in control from Jump Street while knocking off Corona Centennial, one of the better teams in the Southern Section, 69-62.

The way in which the Redondo Sea Hawks improved to 11-2 while handing Elizabeth (NJ) St. Patrick its first loss, 58-54, was vastly more complicated.

The Celtics burst to a 10-0 advantage but things quickly got much more competitive – if, often, more than just a tad helter-skelter – and stayed that way throughout.

The Sea Hawks moved out to a five-point lead late in the second quarter before the Celtics took a 29-27 advantage at intermission.

St. Patrick, which started four sophomores and a junior – with two of the 10^th graders standing 6-foot-11 and 6-10, respectively – seemed on the verge of pulling away a couple of minutes into the fourth quarter while going in front, 44-37.

But, after the Sea Hawks went up by a point on two Billy Preston free throws, one of those big sophomores, Nicholas Richards, dunked to grab the lead back for St. Patrick, 52-51.

After Redondo failed to score, reserve sophomore guard Bryce Aiken – whose jump shooting was his team’s most viable offensive option after intermission – buried an 18-footer to put his team up, 54-51, with 53 seconds to go.

The Sea Hawks missed a shot but it was knocked out of bounds back to their possession.

After a timeout, Leland Green penetrated but his shot was blocked and, by the time Redondo point guard Elijah Nesbit could foul Aiken on the St. Patrick side of the floor, only 7.2 seconds remained and the Sea Hawks still had to foul again before the Celtics would be in the bonus situation.

And that is about when chaos broke out.

With the 5-foot-3 Nesbit standing near Aiken and a couple of other St. Patrick players also nearly huddled around Aiken, a scuffle broke out (I didn’t see punches thrown), with noticeable shoves eventually being exchanged by Preston and Richards before coaches and tourney officials – and, likely, a few parents – could separate the players and get everyone back to their benches.

The three game officials huddled for five or six minutes away from the benches.

By the time they had sorted out what each had seen, Preston and Nesbit of Redondo, and Aiken and Richards of St. Patrick, were ejected for “fighting” (again I saw only shoves in real time and in a video viewing well after the game).

And three St. Patrick players – Brandt Roundtree, Buay Koka and Brandon Hampton – had been ejected for leaving the bench and going onto the floor during the scuffle.

The officials ruled that no Redondo players had left the bench and went onto the floor during the ruckus.

With two free throws awarded for each ejection, it left Redondo with “plus six” and only those were shot.

With no players on either side of the lane, sophomore Ryse Williams hit the first five attempts before missing the sixth – leaving his team up, 56-54.

The possession arrow was in Redondo’s favor (the ejections on both sides leading to a “held ball” situation) and Williams was fouled after receiving the inbounds pass near mid-court.

He then sank two more free throws with 6.6 seconds to go and that was that.

All of the players ejected will be forced (by National Federation rules) to miss their next game.

And that means that Redondo will be without two starters (Preston and Nesbit) for the championship game while St. Patrick will take on Centennial for third place (at 6:30) minus Richards and Aikens, as well as Roundtree, Koka and Hampton (who didn’t play Monday night, as I recall).

National Federation rules designate that players ejected for “fighting” or coming off the bench in “fighting” situations must sit out the next game as part of the penalty.

All in all, it was a (choose any one-description) “stunning . . . bizarre . . . startling . . . baffling” close to a game that was oh-so-close to ending with St. Patrick staying unbeaten and moving into the championship game.

Watch basketball long enough, I guess, and you’ll see just about everything.

With the way Fairfax played Monday night, though, even full-strength St. Patrick or Redondo teams would have had to play extremely well to hand the Lions their first loss Tuesday night.

Senior point guard Lindsey Drew made terrific decisions with the ball, as both playmaker and scorer.

And another senior, Currie (who started his prep career at Fairfax, left for Bellflower St. John Bosco early in his sophomore season, then returned to Fairfax to start the second semester a year ago), came off the bench and immediately started scoring off both deep and mid-range jumpers.

Centennial never found a defensive answer for him.

SMU-bound Sedrick Barefield (33 points) hit enough shots for Centennial to keep things from getting too out of hand.

The Huskies were able to pare a 16-point deficit to five points in the final minute but a Jordan Griffin jumper that would have got them to within two points with about 20 seconds to go rimmed in and out.

Along with the championship and third-place contests, six other games will be played at Torrey Pines on Tuesday, including the 4:55 “American Division” championship between La Habra (CA) Sonora and Ludowici (GA) Faith Baptist Christian Academy South.