STUDIO CITY, CA – The Harvard-Westlake High boys’ basketball team continued its sprint Tuesday night to the No. 1 overall seed in the CIF Southern Section’s Open Division playoffs.
The Wolverines’ 63-52, Mission League win against visiting Sierra Canyon also propelled them a huge step toward securing the top seed in the league’s playoff.
Their 14th win in a row – during which they’ve outscored their opponents by 21.5 ppg – pushed them to 23-1, overall, and 5-0 in league.
Coach David Rebibo’s team returns to its gym Thursday night for a game with Chaminade (18-7 and 1-4), then plays St. Francis (16-10) as part of the six-game, Trinity-Mission Showcase in Inglewood at the Intuit Dome Arena Saturday.
Barring shocking – far from hyperbole in this case – losses in both of those games, the Wolverines will get a bye into next Tuesday’s league tourney semifinals. They’ll host one of them and – if they win – be on their home court for the title game the next night.
The CIF SS office will unveil all of playoff fields at noon on Feb. 8 – on Saturday, kicked back from the usual Sunday because of an NFL game being played on the 9th.
Should the Wolverines win out thru next Wednesday night, they will be the No. 1 Open Division seed and play host to each of their three Pool A games, with the championship game set for March 1 in Ontario’s Toyota Arena.
Getting there – and to Sacramento, for the opportunity to win a record-extending third State Open title in a row – is foremost on the minds of Nikolas Khamenia and his Wolverines’ teammates.
But the 6-foot-8 Khamenia (pictured) knows the roads to Ontario and Sacramento will be paved with a lot of speed bumps that they’ll need to navigate smoothly.
“We’re getting better,” he said Tuesday night, after going for 17 points, eight rebounds and seven assists a day after landing on the 24-member, McDonald’s All-American team.
“But we’ve got to continue to improve. We did a lot of good things tonight (in the program’s 114th win over a 123-game stretch). And we know that coach (Rebibo) will talk (in practice) just as much about the things we didn’t do well tonight – things we need to continue to work on – as the things we did well.”
The Sierra Canyon Trailblazers (18-4 and 4-1) were No. 6 in Monday’s updated CIF SS computer ratings and remain in strong contention to land in the eight-team, Open field – especially if they can topple No. 7 Notre Dame Saturday in the Intuit Dome Arena.
They did a solid job with their half-court defense in the first half, holding the hosts to 10 of 30 shooting from the field.
But they still trailed, 25-16, because Khamenia and Joe Sterling (with 12 points, one of four Wolverines to score in double figures) had six of those buckets – three of those from behind the arc.
Khamenia was directly involved with 17 of his team’s 19 third-quarter points, scoring seven of them himself, assisting on the five of the buckets he didn’t score himself.
Six-eight Dominique Bentho (with Sterling and Amir Jones, one of three juniors in Rebibo’s lineup) added 11 points, with all three of his third-quarter buckets coming out of screen-and-roll action with Khamenia.
Jones hit two 3s in the final quarter and finished with 10 points.
Bryce James came off the bench to added 11 points, including two 3s, for Sierra Canyon.
Six-six senior Bryce Cofield was easily the most productive – and tough to guard – Trailblazer Tuesday night, scoring 22 points (including six of seven on free throws), by powering his way over or thru defenders.
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