RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Ca. – The Etiwanda High boys’ basketball team took a big step toward making it the front-runner for the Baseline League title Friday night, while diving right back into the mix for a spot in the eight-team CIF Southern Section Open Division playoff field.
In a game in which neither team held an advantage larger than six points, the host Eagles knocked off the Damien Spartans, 45-39.
Etiwanda improved to 5-0 in league and 15-4 overall while the Spartans dropped to 3-1 and 21-2.
A little more than 24 hours after bagging its most significant victory of the season, Coach Dave Kleckner’s team is back at it against another one-loss opponent when the Eagles face host Colony (18-1, with five Palomares League wins by an average margin of 30.6 points) in near-by Ontario Saturday night at 7 in the State Preview Classic, presented by SBLive.
Coach Mike LeDuc’s Spartans, whose only other loss was to Riverside Poly in a Dec. 30 Platinum Division semifinal of the Classic at Damien, play their next three games at home – including a Jan. 31 rematch with Etiwanda.
It was a contest in which buckets were extremely difficult to convert – the visitors finishing 10 of 32 from the field (with their only two 3s coming in the final three minutes) with the Eagles hitting 16 of 47 shots.
The outcome was determined, in large part, because Etiwanda – not normally nails from behind the arc – knocked in six 3s, including those by senior guard Jacob Barcelo and junior forward Curtis Williams, with 3:26 and two minutes to play, respectively, that gave the Eagles four-point leads.
Junior point guard Jimmy Baker Jr. (10 points and three assists) gave Etiwanda its first six-point advantage with a pull-up 12-footer, with 1:18 to go, just before the shot clock expired.
After R.J. Smith hit a couple of free throws seven seconds later, Baker (pictured) also hit both ends of a 1 and 1 to push the margin back to six.
Six-foot-eight junior Jimmy Oladokun Jr. (seven points and 12 rebounds) missed an in-tight and an R.J. Smith jumper was blocked by Barcelo (a team-high 12 points, including three 3s).
Baker missed the front end of 1 and 1 and the University of Colorado-bound Smith hit his first field goal – after eight misfires – of the night, knocking in a quick-hitting 3 from the right wing, and LeDuc signaling a timeout with 31 seconds to go.
Barcelo, fouled four seconds after play resumed, sank his first but missed his second free throw.
After another timeout, Damien guard Bradley Xie got a hard double-team while trying to dribble and find R.J. Smith coming off a screen.
When Smith finally got the ball well beyond the arc, he, too, was blitzed by Etiwanda defenders with the ball being knocked loose – and finally ending up in the hands of a streaking Quinton Webb (11 points and eight rebounds), who wound up from deep down his right hip and smashed in a dunk for the final margin just before the buzzer.
R.J. and Kaleb Smith (no relation/UC Riverside-bound) led Damien with 12 points apiece for the Spartans.
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