MANHATTAN BEACH, CA – In a generation when the lineups of many exceptional – if not most, a cynic would suggest – high school basketball teams are heavily impacted by transfers, one Southern California squad sitting on a 20-1 record is the exception.
“I’ve got pictures at home of us together when we were 10 years old, playing in camps or on the same (youth) team,” Mira Costa High guard Will Householter said Tuesday night of he and his fellow three seniors in the Mustangs’ lineup after their 66-47 Bay League, home-court victory over Redondo Union in front of an approximate 2,400.
Householter and those long-time, on- and off-court buddies, Dylan Black, Nick Lundy, and Trey Pearce, and the fifth starter, sophomore forward Preston Ezewiro, were down, 6-0, barely a minute and a half into the game with the Sea Hawks (now 13-8 overall and 3-2 in league).
But with the 6-foot-3, left-handed Householter dictating things at both ends of the floor – with seven points, five rebounds, three assists and a steal – the Mustangs closed the first quarter with an 18-6 run.
And, with Black scoring all 16 of his points over the next two quarters (12 on shots from well behind the arc), the Mustangs took a 21-point advantage into the final eight minutes and Coach Neal Perlmutter was mindful of not seeing any slippage.
And, despite four turnovers in the final quarter (a couple of which when reserves 11-15 on the floor), it would have taken some serious nit-picking to find serious fault in his team’s performance.
“We worked on making sure they didn’t hurt us with their offensive rebounding and their defensive pressure,” said Perlmutter, in his fifth season with the program, with 82 wins despite the 8-9 record in the 2020-21 “pandemic-altered spring schedule”.
“And, except for last couple of minutes of the second quarter, I was very happy with our defensive rebounding and how we took care of the ball.”
The Mustangs’ only loss came to Mater Dei (64-54), two days after Christmas in a tournament in Palm Desert.
Redondo Coach Reggie Morris Jr. (whose team seems have the make-up for a deep run in the CIF 2A playoffs) was aware of how tough a task the Sea Hawks faced Tuesday night.
“They’re long (tall) at every position, and so skilled and experienced,” he said before the game.
“And they play with a purpose.”
Ah, yes – with a purpose. A phrase that is imbedded in the vernacular of any astute basketball coach.
Playing with purpose, aka, “playing the way you’ve been drilled and coached . . . playing like a ‘good teammate’ . . . playing fundamentally-sound basketball and playing, first and foremost, to win.”
And, in an era of mixed tapes/highlight videos and other social media-driven, self-promotions like highlighting individual stats (with no mention of the game’s outcome) and boasting about scholarship offers (real or imagined), well, playing with a purpose is far too rare these days.
But it’s the real deal with teams like the one that has evolved under Perlmutter, who was coach at West Torrance for three seasons – the program winning a Southern Section title in the second – before behind hired by Mira Costa.
And the evolution has been steady, too.
As freshmen, Householter and Black were part of a varsity squad that was 20-9 in Perlmutter’s second season, splitting 2A playoff games with San Clemente and Newport Pacifica Christian.
The 6-7 Pierce (four points, four rebounds and a couple of blocks Tuesday) and 6-3 Lundy (11 points and seven rebounds) joined them from the freshmen team for the “pandemic-altered season”, when the Mustangs lost at Westlake in the first round of the 2AA playoffs.
There was a Bay League title, 20-9 record and second-round 2AA loss to Los Altos to end last season.
The expectations for the 2022-23 were already in place as the players spent the spring and summer on the “club ball” circuit – long before Mira Costa classes resumed on Aug. 24.
“We wanted to win a tournament (they did that in December), the Bay League and a CIF (Southern Section) championship,” said Perlmutter.
Those expectations haven’t been altered since the CIF Southern Section office unveiled playoff divisions for the 2022-24 two-year “cycle” on Oct. 5, and Mira Costa was among the 41 programs in the “Division I” classification.
Twenty-one of the teams in this week’s BurlisonOnBasketball Southern California Top 25 are part of those 41 programs.
And that means that, even with seven or eight of those programs pulled up into the Open Division’s eight-team bracket, the road to a Southern Section title is going to be a lot rockier than the Mustangs have traveled on under Perlmutter – and considerably tougher than the one his West Torrance team had to navigate to CIF SS title hardware.
That’s fine by Perlmutter “we’ll be ready, regardless of who we have to play,” he said.
And that’s cool with Householter and his crew, too.
“When we go into practice, we’re not thinking about that (being “under the radar” relative to their performance this season) or who we’re playing the next game,” Householter said, after the kind of performance – 14 points, 11 rebounds, six assists and three steals – that, assuming a Bay League title, makes him a viable league Player of the Year and all-CIF SS candidate.
“We’re just focusing on doing what we have to do in order to improve and get ready for the next game.”
AKA, playing with purpose.
BurlisonOnBasketball Southern California Top 25
(Records as of Jan. 17 results)
- Corona Centennial (CIF SS D-1) 18-3
Next up: Thursday, vs. Martin Luther King, 7:15 p.m.
- Studio City Harvard-Westlake (D-1) 20-1
Next up: Wednesday, at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, 7 p.m.
- Torrance Bishop Montgomery (D-1) 21-1
Next up: Wednesday, at St. Paul, 7 p.m.
- Valencia West Ranch (D-1) 22-1
Next up: Friday, vs. Valencia, 6:30 p.m.
- Bellflower St. John Bosco (D-1) 19-3
Next up: Wednesday, vs. Santa Margarita, 7:30 p.m.
- Chatsworth Sierra Canyon (D-1) 17-4
Next up: Wednesday, at St. Francis, 7 p.m.
- Temecula Rancho Christian (D-2A) 12-8
Next up: Saturday, vs. Fairmont Prep .
- Playa del Rey St. Bernard (D-1) 16-5
Next up: Wednesday, vs. St. Anthony, 7 p.m.
- RSM Santa Margarita (D-1) 20-3
Next up: Wednesday, at St. John Bosco, 7:30 p.m.
- Etiwanda (D-1) 15-4
Next up: Wednesday, vs. Los Osos, 6:30 p.m.
- Sherman Oaks Notre Dame (D-1) 14-7
Next up: Wednesday, vs. Harvard-Westlake, 7 p.m.
- Santa Ana Mater Dei (D-1) 15-5
Next up: Wednesday, at Servite, 7 p.m.
- Manhattan Beach Mira Costa (D-1) 20-1
Next up: Friday, at Culver City, 7 p.m.
- La Mirada (D-2A) 17-6
Next up: Wednesday, vs. Downey, 7 p.m.
- Santa Ana Foothill (D-1) 21-2
Next up: Friday, at Brea Olinda, 7 p.m.
- Eastvale Roosevelt (D-1) 18-5
Next up: Thursday, vs. Corona, 7:15 p.m.
- Windward (D-1) 18-6
Next up: Jan. 24, at Viewpoint, 7 p.m.
- JSerra (D-1) 14-6
Next up: Wednesday, at Orange Lutheran, 7 p.m.
- Sun Valley Village Christian (D-1) 19-4
Next up: Saturday, at Colony, 4:30 p.m.
- Los Angeles Brentwood School (D-1) 18-3
Next up: Thursday, vs. Viewpoint, 7 p.m.
- Rancho Cucamonga (D-2AA) 17-4
Next up: Wednesday, vs. Damien, 6:30 p.m.
- Orange Lutheran (D-2AA) 13-7
Next up: Wednesday, vs. JSerra, 7 p.m.
- Irvine Crean Lutheran (D-1) 14-5
Next up: Thursday, at Placentia Valencia, 6:15 p.m.
- San Pedro Rolling Hills Prep (D-1) 18-5
Next up: Saturday, at Colony, vs. Los Altos, 9 a.m.
- Northridge Heritage Christian (D-1) 13-6
Next up: Thursday, vs. Ketchikan, 4:30 p.m.
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