RIVERSIDE – This Harvard-Westlake boys’ basketball team has already accomplished something that last season’s, 33-2, State Open Division-winning squad couldn’t:
It has rung up a CIF Southern Section championship.
And, after the results of the boys and girls Open title games at Cal Baptist University Friday night, the same can be said of the Wolverines’ Etiwanda girls’ counterpart.
Coach David Rebibo’s Harvard-Westlake team trailed just three times – at 2-0, 5-3 and 7-5 – and used its stout half-court defense with just enough offensive efficiency to grind out a 54-47 win over No. 2 seed Eastvale Roosevelt.
The Wolverines (30-3), who won their pool games with Corona Centennial, Sierra Canyon, and St. John Bosco by an average margin of 22.3 points, picked up championship hardware, jacket patches and t-shirts after their win.
And the victory over the Mustangs (30-3) also earned them the No. 1 seed for the Southern Open portion of the State Regional playoffs when those brackets are unveiled out of the CIF State office in Sacramento early Sunday evening.
Barring any eye-batting decisions in the same process, Coach Steve Singleton’s Mustangs will be given the No. 2 seed in what is expected to be at least a six- and, maybe, an eight-team field.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, with a multitude of CIF Southern Section (including the D-1 final between Sherman Oaks Notre Dame and Windward at Toyota Arena in Ontario), San Diego Section (with its Open final pitting Montgomery vs. Carlsbad) and Central Section (Clovis North vs. Santa Maria St. Joseph) games still to be played Saturday.
In the first half of the double-header – which drew nice crowds for both tilts – at Cal Baptist, Etiwanda (the No. 2 seed when pool play got underway on Feb. 10) cruised past No. 1 Sierra Canyon, 65-44, to snap the Trailblazers’ 22-game winning streak.
The Kennedy Smith-led Eagles were beaten by Sierra Canyon in the section final a year ago before turning the tables on the Trailblazers in the regional final and going on to win the state title in Sacramento.
The Eagles (29-3) and Sierra Canyon (30-2) are locks to be the No.’s 1 and 2 seeds when the girls’ Open regional bracket is announced along with the boys’ matchups on Sunday.
The Wolverines held the Mustangs to 15 of 50 from the field – 30 percent – and their best player, 6-foot-5 junior Brayden Burries, to 14 points (just three in the second half) and four of 15 from the floor.
But, despite building 10-point edges in the second and third quarters, they couldn’t create enough distance to ever appear comfortably in front.
Each time the Mustangs were able to string together enough defensive stops to get to within, six, five or four points, the Wolverines responded – be it USC-bound Trent Perry (13 points despite missing eight of 11 shots), Harvard-bound Robert Hinton (with 15 points on four of seven from the field and seven of eight free throws, the most efficient scorer they had Friday night) or terrific junior Nikolas Khamenia (15 points with his only second-half bucket a slick jump hook from the right baseline).
Colorado State-bound Darnez Slater led the Mustangs with 18 points, and his second 3 of the second half – from the right corner (via a pass from Walker) – got his team to within 50-47 with 42 seconds remaining.
Perry was fouled with 15 seconds to go but missed both free throws, with Slater appearing to clear the defensive rebound cleanly.
But a late whistle – and there was more than a few of those Friday night, although not an inordinate number in “favor” of either squad – created a bit of momentary confusion on the floor and in the stands.
Burries was called for fouling Hinton after the second miss, with Hinton awarded two free throws.
Video replay of the sequence didn’t appear to show any contact from Burries – or anyone else – with Hinton.
But, in a still photo of the sequence I saw Saturday morning, Burries is grabbing Hinton’s jersey prior to the call.
Hinton swished both attempts to pad the lead to five points. Even minus the Hinton free throws, the Mustangs would had have it difficult to get off a clean look at a potential tying three, since – with just one team foul at the time – the Wolverines had three fouls to give to disrupt any action to set up a jump shooter from behind the arc.
The Mustangs missed their final attempt, and the officials delayed the inevitable outcome by another couple of minutes, calling the Mustangs for a foul with .2 of a second to go and giving Perry two more free throws.
Perry – who had missed four in a row – swished his final two attempts after Singleton called a timeout for the final margin and the signal to start celebrating.
The first game of the evening was expected to be a wire-to-wire, type of affair, with the outcome not determined until deep into the fourth quarter.
But it proved to be all things Etiwanda, at both ends of the floor.
And that was especially the case over the final 16 minutes.
The Eagles’ defense – which began with full-court zone pressure and then morphed into a stout, half-court, person-to-person (I can’t bring myself to write “man to man”) that kept shooters from getting quality jump-shooting attempts and dribblers from getting straight-line drives.
Etiwanda was up just five points (20-15) at intermission, largely because its offense was clanky and the Trailblazers – largely by way of McDonald’s All-American McKenley Randolph – were crashing the lanes for second and third shot attempts via rebounds.
But the Eagles boxed out a lot more firmly in the second half while kicking their offense up a couple of notches.
Once Etiwanda got its advantage to the 12- to 14-point range in the third quarter, Sierra Canyon started extending its defense, and attempted to trap dribblers near the sidelines.
But, after a couple of timeouts called by Coach Stan Delus, the Eagles eventually solved the pressure and began cutting it up with crisp passing and hard cuts toward the bucket and behind defenders until it turned into a virtual layup drill.
Smith (a McDonald’s All-American who signed with USC in November) missed all five of her shots from the floor in the first half but was credited with 13 points, 13 rebounds, three assists (five or six would have been more accurate) and three blocked shots.
She also did a commendable defensive job against Sierra Canyon’ heavily touted sophomore, Jerzy Robinson, in the second half after senior teammate Mykelle Richards picked up her third foul.
The 15-year-old wunderkind – the Arizona Player of the Year last season at Desert Mountain High in Scottsdale – scored 17 points and grabbed 15 rebounds but missed 12 of 18 shots and committed four turnovers.
Randolph added 14 points and 16 rebounds as Sierra Canyon’s player not named Robinson or Randolph combined to miss 23 of 27 shots.
Richards, junior post Grace Knox and sophomore point guard Puff Morris navigated their foul issues – they each finished with three – to combine for 45 points, 20 rebounds and six steals.
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