SoCal High School & Prep Report

Valencia Tournament Update:
Wednesday's Games--(December 18,1997)

Several second round games were played yesterday in the Valencia Tournament. The usual suspects seemed to win, and there were a couple of upsets, including Montclair losing again, this time to Birmingham, and a very close and exciting consolation round quarter final game between Calabasas and Hollywood, which wasn't an upset, just an incredibly close, hard fought game. Here are yesterday's results and highlights:

San Fernando 81, Crespi 59

This one was not much of a surprise at all, and Crespi is a team that is struggling to find out who and what they are, while San Fernando has already found the answer :Devin Montgomery. Yesterday, Devin scored 22 points to lead the Tigers to victory in a game which really was never in doubt from the first quarter. San Fernando jumpted out to a 27-16 lead at the end of the first quarter, and then stretched it's halftime lead to 48-29. In the third quarter, the Tigers again increased the lead by one point overall, to 60-40. And even though Crespi pretty much played the Tigers just about even in the second half, San Fernando continued to outscore Crespi in the fourth 21-19, to win by a score of 81-59.

In addition to Montgomery, Mike Page had 11 points, and Luis De La Rosa had 13. Others scoring were F. Atkins with 8, B. Atkins with 5, Trinidad with 2, Tubbs 9, and Purdell with 6. San Fernando improved it's record to 9-0 and continued to show why it is quickly becoming regarded as one of the top teams in City Section play.

Crespi struggled and only Jon Bird scored in double figures with 11. Andy Owings had 4, Tim McDonough 5, Rob Muller 7, Mirtis Ducksworth had 5, Ryan Moore and Pat Casella only had one each, Marcin Jagoda had 5, Jordan Johnson 9, James Spratt 4, and Howard Johnson 2 points. Crespi is struggling, and is only 1-5 on the season.

Calabasas 74, Hollywood 72 (OT)

Now this was a shooting contest. Even though it was a consolation round quarter final, the teams played like it was the championship bracket.

Spencer Hariton and Jason Miller , both former Maccabi Team LA Basketball players, had 14 and 27 respectively, while Huton Ghoreishi had 19 for Calabasas in the winning effort. Hollywood's scoring was led by Lewis Powell with 23, Roberto Pinedo with 22 points and Brandon Fisher with 19. Only one other player scored for Hollywood, Del Cid with only 2, and that uneven scoring attack really was what made the difference in this game. Others who scored for Calabasas were Rugin with 4, Shin with 2, Corcoran with 6 and McKewon with 2. These two teams played it almost dead even the whole way. At the end of the first quarter, the score was tied 19-19 and this was just a harbinger of things to come. At the half, Calabasas led by 4, 32-36, and then in the third quarter the two teams played it even again, each with 14 points. In the fourth, Hollywood came from behind to make up the four points, and the teams took it into overtime, where Calabasas finally pulled it out by two.

The big game yesterday though was the Birmingham-Montclair game.

Birmingham won, 64-62.

Stanley Flectcher and Emmanuel Evans supplied the spark for the Braves in this very close game, Fletcher with 19, and Evans with 16 and 10 rebounds. Jerome Riley had 8, Salas had 11 points, but the real reason Birmingham won was because of Riley's great defensive play. Montclair, on the other hand, never really got going, and we suspect that Rocky Steryo was either sick or very tired and just not ready to play: He only managed three points in the game, until late in the third when he hit a three pointer. He then woke up a bit, and managed to finish with 20, scoring 14 in the last 8 minutes of the game. But in fairness to Montclair, they were playing without Kevin Bentley who was on a football recruiting trip to Wisonsin.

Compton Centennial 61, Antelope Valley 57.

Roger Priez scored 17 points for AV but Centennial was able to pull off the four point win behind the great play of Jones and Johnson, with 17 and 13 points each. Antelope Valley's record dropped to 5-3, while Centennial improved to 5-1, and advanced to play Birmingham today at 6:00 pm in a semifinal game.

Valencia 75, Ventura 60.

In another Championship quarterfinal game, Eskias McDaniels scored 19 points for the Valencia Vikings, while Pawlak had 10, Leon had 14, Sisson had 10, Jordan scored 18, and only one Valencia player failed to score in double digits: While with 4 points. Valencia never trailed, out scoring Ventura 21-13 in the first quarter, 21-11 in the second quarter, for a 42-24 lead at the half. In the third quarter, Valencia continued to hammer Ventura, out pointing them 22-12, to bring the lead to 64-35. Valencia backed off a bit, and Ventura managed to cut the lead almost in half, turning it on in the fourth to outscore Valencia 24-11, but this still left them 15 points short.

Valencia advanced to the semifinals and played San Fernando tonight at 7:30 at Valencia. We'll have the details tomorrow.

A couple of other consolation quarterfinals were also played:

Littlerock 46, Ridgecrest Burroughs 51.

Santa Paula 81, Quartz Hill 59.

Granada Hills 75, La Salle 69.

Semifinal play continues today. We'll have the scores tomorrow.

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