CORONA – The Harvard-Westlake team brought an abrupt – and decisive – end to the three-season dominance of California basketball by the Centennial High program Tuesday night in front of an SRO gathering and Spectrum Television broadcast.
Coach Josh Giles’ host Huskies came into the Southern Open championship game with an 111-11 record since seniors Jared McCain and Aaron McBride were freshmen.
And three consecutive CIF Southern Section Open championship foes (the most recent, 58-56 over St. John Bosco on Feb. 25 in the Honda Center) were among the 52 consecutive wins over California-based opponents stacked up by the Huskies.
Prior to Tuesday’s night’s game, it could have been staunchly argued that the David Rebibo-coached Wolverines were the best in-state opponent faced by the Huskies since they started that Cali streak in the COVID-revamped, 2021 season.
They took a 31-2 record with them from Studio City in the San Fernando Valley and, for the bulk of the season, were the consensus choice as club that stood the best shot of snapping that stunning Centennial streak.
And that’s what occurred Tuesday night.
But who could have imagined that it would happen in the fashion that the 80-61 score succinctly illustrated?
And the win did more to bring an end to that remarkable stretch by the Centennial program, that included a 33-1, State championship 2021-22 season:
It earned the Wolverines a trip to Sacramento for a Saturday night State Open title game with Northern champion Santa Maria St. Joseph in The Golden 1 Center.
It will be an unlikely “rematch”:
Why?
Because the programs met about a year ago, with the Wolverines playing host to St. Joseph in the Southern Regional Open first-round. They won, 63-55, despite then-freshman Tounde Yessoufou’s 27 points and 14 rebounds.
But the CIF’s Central Section’s powers-that-be elected to send Coach Tom Mott’s Knights to the Northern Open this season and they earned that title game with Harvard-Westlake by knocking off the No.’s 2 (San Ramon Dougherty Valley) and 1 (Modesto Christian) seeds on the road.
More on that matchup – and Yessoufou and his teammates – later this week.
For now, the focus on the Wolverines’ stunning dominance of the Huskies Tuesday night.
They clicked – at both ends of the floor – from Jump Street, with junior guard Trent Perry lighting up any defender who tried to check him in route to 15 of his team’s 23 first-quarter points.
Only foul trouble – he went to the bench after picking up his second foul with 5:49 and went to the bench, not return to the start of the second half – was able to take him out of his offensive rhythm.
He finished with a game-high 25 points (eight of 12 from the field, including four of 6 behind the arch, and perfect on five free throws) to go with four rebounds and six assists.
Seniors Brady Dunlap and Jacob Huggins were in the starting lineup on May 25, 2021, in the COVID-altered season when the Wolverines, in a CIF SS Open pool play opener, were the last California team to knock off the Huskies.
And they were terrific Tuesday night, Dunlap scoring 20 points – with three 3s – while the Princeton-bound Huggins scored only six points but grabbed nine rebounds with a couple of blocks and assists despite missing the final six minutes of the second quarter after he was hit with his second personal.
The second junior in Rebibo’s starting lineup, Robert Hinton, turned in a determined and sound defensive effort on all the Huskies’ perimeter threats – Duke-bound, McDonald’s All-American McCain included – while scoring 11 points.
And the team’s top two reserves, junior Christian Horry, and freshman Dominique Bentho, helped expand their team’s lead – from six to 10 points – while on the floor for the foul-saddled Perry and Huggins in the second quarter.
They are likely to become 2023-24 starters with the departure of Dunlap (who signed with Notre Dame in November but has re-opened his recruiting) and Huggins and are two of the reasons why – barring more-than-normal off-season “player movement” – the Wolverines are likely to go into next season as the top-ranked high school team in the west.
“Horry has played well all season, but he has really turned it up lately,” Rebibo said while swarmed by well-wishers on the Centennial floor, referencing Horry’s Tuesday night effort (three assists and the kind of defense that makes former NBA standout Robert Horry an approving courtside-viewer and proud papa) and in the regional win at St. John Bosco Saturday night.
“And (the 6-7) Bentho was outstanding and battled their big guys (the LMU- and UCLA-bound McBride and Devin Williams, respectively) to a standstill when he was out there. He’s made so much progress and I’m so proud of him. He’s going to step in (the starting lineup) and be so good next season.”
But even as it took nothing short of a collective 32-minute effort to, (as best possible) contain an extraordinary group of Centennial offensive standouts, limit their second-shot opportunities, and run their offense at a superb rate of efficiency Tuesday night, one Wolverine was the standout.
“I can’t recall the last time I watched a (high school) sophomore play so well in such a big game,” former UCLA player, long-time college coach and father of Brady Dunlap, Jeff Dunlap said.
He was referencing 6-8 Nikolas Khamenia, who was pretty much anything his team needed him to be, offensively and defensively, Tuesday night while being guarded by – and guarding – guys a couple of years older who will be playing in college while he’s still weeks from starting his junior season.
Khamenia (pictured) scored 20 points – eight of 11 from the field, including three 3s – to go with seven assists, seven rebounds, two steals and just one turnover.
From handling the ball near-flawlessly against full-court pressure and initiating his team’s half-court sets; to creating jump shots and layups for teammates – or himself; to fighting to keep McBride and Williams out of quality low-post position; or to switching out onto the likes of McCain, guard Mike Price or junior wing Eric Freeny, what didn’t he do well Tuesday night?
“I’ve said it Day 1 when he was a freshman,” Rebibo said. “He’s going to be one of the best players I’ve coached and will be good enough to play for anyone (college) in the country.”
There aren’t many college coaches who’ve watched Harvard-Westlake over the past two seasons who would beg to differ with Rebibo’s assessment:
The coaching staffs from UCLA, Gonzaga, USC, and Stanford are among those that have already offered him scholarships long before he’s eligible to sign a National Letter of Intent (in November of 2024).
Khamenia’s thoughts on those kind of observations?
Uh, not a lot . . .
“I just want to do anything I can to help us win,” he said.
“We really had just one day to prepare for this game (Monday practice, since CIF programs can’t practice or meet as teams on Sundays).
After the gut-crunching effort to take to knock off host St. John Bosco (the Braves, and not the Wolverines, went to the CIF SS Open final vs. Centennial in the Honda Center by way of their Pool play win at Harvard-Westlake) Saturday night, “we thought we’d have just a ‘light’ practice on Monday,” Khamenia added.
“But we had a full-contact, hard practice. Guys were battling each other, going all out and diving on the floor for loose balls.”
Message delivered.
“It was coach (Rebibo) letting us know,” he added, “that if we were going to beat a team as good as Centennial, on their home court, it was going to take that kind of effort to do it.”
Message executed – and as precisely as possible on this level of basketball.
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