TEMECULA – A year ago, as the No. 1 seed, the Rancho Christian High boys’ basketball team stumbled in its first pool-play and that was enough to keep it from getting a chance to knock off Sierra Canyon in the CIF Southern Section’s Open Division championship game.
Friday night, as the No. 3 seed, things again looked more than a bit precarious for Coach Ray Barefield’s club in its home playoff-opener against No. 6 Harvard-Westlake.
But, despite trailing by nine points early in the contest and by a point with just less than three minutes to go, the Eagles were able to claw out the victory, 67-62.
Coupled with Mater Dei’s overtime win at No. 2 Corona Centennial later Friday night, the Rancho Christian victory means the Monarchs’ game at Rancho Christian Tuesday night will pit the teams that got out of Pool B with wins.
With senior Brase Dottin drilling three 3s – he finished with six and a game-high 22 points – the Mission League-champion Wolverines (23-5) burst in front, 13-4, even as they were probably still shaking the kinks out of their legs following a 105-mile ride from their campus in Studio City.
But then the Evan Mobley Factor kicked in, as the USC-bound 7-footer scored three in-tight buckets, grabbed four rebounds and blocked a shot while altering several others.
The Eagles (22-5) started showcasing their own shooting range in the second quarter, as Mobley, Bryson Stephens (who scored nine in the quarter and 14 for the night) and junior Jaden Byers knocked in 3s to go in front 30-29, at intermission.
They hit seven of 11 shots from the field (including two more 3s) and were up late in the third quarter by seven points. But the Wolverines chopped the deficit to two points just before the buzzer, the last three of those being lopped by a deeper jumper from the right wing by junior Adam Hinton.
The lead switched hands eight times in the final quarter – twice on Hinton 3s – with a Dominick Harris 3 (pictured/he scored 10 of his 17 points over the final eight minutes) from the left wing putting the Eagles up to stay, 62-60, with 2:33 to go.
Fourteen seconds earlier, Harvard-Westlake’s terrific senior point guard, Spencer Hubbard, stumbled while driving the right side of the baseline, under the defensive heat of Mobley, fell and was called for a travel.
Hubbard apparently turned his ankle on the play and was helped to the sideline while a trainer examined the ankle.
Dottin (who gave his team its final lead on the last of his 3s with 3:14 that was set up by an on-target pass from Hubbard) turned the ball over but Rancho Christian responded in kind, with the Wolverines attacking in transition.
One of Southern California’s best sophomores, 6-4 Cameron Thrower, caught a pass on the right wing at full speed – while eying a trailing Mobley over his left shoulder.
Thrower flipped the ball up with as much arc as possible in an attempt to get the shot up on the glass and thru the basket before Mobley could get to it.
But Mobley slapped the leather against the backboard, recovered the ball and the action turned to the other direction.
It wasn’t called a goal-tending, as Harvard-Westlake Coach David Rebibo and staff were pleading for.
But was it? In real time, in front of me (I was sitting on the baseline, just steps from the sequence), it appeared as close to goal-tending as possible without being goal-tending.
With the aid of instant replay, though, maybe I would have thought otherwise.
That conceded, the Wolverines very quickly got a couple more point-blank attempts to tie the score following a travel call against Harris, as 6-8 Trumann Gettings – with the Mobley omni-presence in the lane – missing a layup try from the right side and 6-10 Mason Hooks just missing on a follow attempt along the left side of the baseline before Mobley snatched another of his eventual 12 rebounds.
Stephens’ free throws pushed the Rancho Christian advantage to four points with 54 seconds to go.
After an Eagles’ timeout (during which Hubbard, with ankle re-taped, returned to the game in a show of considerable grit), Hooks – with Mobley on the other side of the lane, too much court for even him to close in time to block the shot – Hooks scored, via a Holden McRae pass, to get the Wolverines to with two points with about 35 seconds to go.
Harris drew a foul 11 seconds later and the Eagles regained that four-point edge and Mobley got block No. 5 (against McRae) and sank the second of two free throws for his 19th point to secure the final score with 4.8 seconds remaining.
Along with the Mater Dei-Rancho Christian clash, other action on tap when Southern Section Open play resumes Tuesday night includes another Pool B contest (Harvard-Westlake at Centennial) and the Pool A games (No. 5 St. Anthony at No 1 Sierra Canyon and No. 8 St. John Bosco at No. 4 Etiwanda.
Hooks (bound for Princeton) grabbed 14 rebounds and scored as many points despite 11 of 18 shots from the floor.
“Evan erased a lot of their layup attempts and we played just enough defense at the right time,” Barefield said.
“We had some wasted (poor shots and turnovers) in the fourth quarter and we can’t do that against this level of competition. But my hat is off to Harvard-Westlake. He (Rebibo) is a great coach.”
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