SANTA ANA – The Heritage Christian High boys’ basketball team traveled – twice – to Mater Dei High in Santa Ana for games this season.
And, on each occasion, the southward-bound traffic on Highway 5 left Coach Paul Tait more than just a tad antsy while checking his watch frequency as the Warriors’ bus driver maneuvered thru a near-quagmire during the 60-mile trek to Orange County.
So, when the CIF Southern Section’s Division 1 bracket was unveiled early Sunday afternoon and he saw where his team was sent to play, Wednesday night’s game wasn’t going to be another of those “dang, are we going to get there in time to even warm up before the game?” trips.
“We left campus (in Northridge) at 12:30 (p.m.) today,” Tait, said matter-of-factly as his team warmed up 20 minutes before the 7 o’clock tipoff of its game with host Foothill in Santa Ana.
“After what happened in our first two trips (to Mater Dei, which is located about eight miles to the southwest of the Foothill campus), I knew we were going to leave earlier.”
Leisurely Wednesday stops for a shoot-around and pre-game meal were followed, a few hours later, by an impressive start-to-finish performance by the Warriors in route to a 59-51 victory over the No. 7 seed Knights.
Tae Simmons provided the on-court assertiveness that helped the visitors build a 14-point advantage late into the second quarter and never allowed the Knights (24-6) to get closer than six points in the late going.
Simmons played well above the crowd all night, snatching six missed shots in the first quarter, five in the second, three in the third and four over the final eight minutes for 18 rebounds.
He scored 15 of his game-high 21 points after intermission, none of his buckets (he was nine of 11 from the field and three of six on free throws) coming from more than a foot or two from outside of the lane.
Simmons (pictured), a sophomore who will play for the Why Not program on the Nike/EYBL circuit this spring, was also sporting a new coiffure, discarding the braids he’d worn most of the season for a mid-sized Afro that made him look closer to 6-foot-9 than the 6-7 he’s listed at.
And, no, it wasn’t something he did to “get ready for the playoffs”.
“Nah,” he said, smiling after helping his team improve to 19-11 during an injury-plagued season.
“It’s just something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while.”
The Warriors did a good job of challenging the Knights’ myriad of jump shooters – which were a big part of Coach Yousof Etemadi’s offensive scheme.
The Knights hit five 3s in the first half and were fouled on another attempt from behind the arc, with senior guard Carlo Billings swishing all three attempts just before intermission to get his team to within 32-24.
But they didn’t another 3 until in the final couple of minutes when the Knights’ comeback attempts were kept in check by Simmons’ dunks and combined free-throw performance of nine of 13 in the fourth quarter.
Five-nine Giovanni Goree and 5-10 Josiah Johnson added 14 and 11 points, respectively, for the Warriors and were among the defenders pressuring the Foothill jump shooters and trying to make them “drivers”.
“We felt we had a better chance that way,” Tait said, “because we had the size (via Simmons, as well as 6-6 sophomore Dillan Shaw and 6-5 junior Seven Bahati) to challenge those shots inside.”
That trio of players combined for five blocks and “altered” multiple other Foothill attempts inside the lane.
Billings, who will attend and play for near-by Chapman University next and was a starter on last season’s State D-II runner-up Knights’ club, led his team with 16 points while sophomore guard Travis Paleo – one of 11 underclassmen for what should be among the five-best teams in Orange County again next season – added 12.
The Warriors won’t have to make another cross-Southern California trip to play their second-round game Friday:
They’ll play host to Eastvale Roosevelt (23-6 after its 63-43 win at home over Dominguez Wednesday night) at 7 o’clock.
In the other D-1 “round of 16 games” set for Friday night:
*Oak Park at No. 1 Etiwanda.
*Crean Lutheran at No. 2 Mater Dei.
*Brentwood at No. 3 Mira Costa.
*Rolling Hills Prep at No. 4 JSerra.
*Crossroads at No. 5 Anaheim Canyon.
*Colony at No. 6 Damien.
*Los Alamitos at St. Paul.
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.