Sea Kings' height
beats Tiger's toughness in quarters
WILDOMAR ---- Corona del
Mar's boys basketball team entered Elsinore's gym on Tuesday night with a
lineup ranging from 6-foot, 9-inches down to 6-1.
The Tigers were literally downsized before the tipoff even happened, but once
official threw the ball in the air and Elsinore's high-flying Keith Lewis, who
stands at 6-3, beat the Sea Kings' 6-9 Stefan Kaluz to the tip, the playing
field was level.
In a hard-fought battle of
post play versus outside-shooting, of rebounding versus hard-nosed defense, No.
4 Corona del Mar came out on top, beating unseeded Elsinore 65-58 on the
Tigers' home floor.
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"We played as hard as
we could ... everybody went 110-percent," Elsinore senior Scotty Buck
said. "It's a bummer to lose, but everybody was going as hard as we could
and that's all you can ask for."
Buck led the Tigers with 16 points and added eight rebounds. He had three of
the Tigers' nine 3-pointers, with Elijah Pearson draining three as well, to
finish with 12 points, Jared Kaplan swishing two more and Randan Horton
another.
Horton's baseline 3 brought Elsinore to within one at 45-44 and was the first
basket of a chaotic fourth quarter.
From there, the Sea Kings banked off a putback from Kaluz ---- who finished
with a game-high 21 points and added 11 rebounds for a double-double ---- to
take a 50-45 lead before Pearson hit his third 3-pointer of the night to put
the Tigers right back in it.
Corona del Mar responded with two easy inside baskets, going up 54-48 before
the combination of Lewis and Buck made it 54-52 with 2:05 remaining.
The Tigers hustled on defense and, in an effort to clog the lane, switched from
a full-court man-to-man defense to a triangle-and-2 zonein the final minute.
But with the outside left open, Sea Kings' sophomore Sean Donovan hit his only
outside shot of the night, draining a 3-pointer from the left wing for a lead
Elsinore did not have enough time to overcome.
"We didn't want their big guy to take the shot, so we rolled the dice and
it didn't go our way," Elsinore coach Pete Rettinger said of his defensive
scheme.
Overall, Elsinore's defense had Corona del Mar coach Ryan Schachter scratching
his head and yelling at his team to keep their composure.
"It was a tough game, they were scrappy and they shot the ball really
well," said Schachter, whose team will now face West Valley in the
semifinals on Friday at Corona del Mar. "(Elsinore) has to be the best
13-win team in the state."
Elsinore, which placed fourth in the Sunbelt League with a 13-13 record, beat
two seeded teams ---- No. 12 Rowland Heights Rowland and No. 5 Laguna Beach
before coming home for what turned out to be its final game.
"The kids battled so hard, they were so courageous and they played with so
much emotion and fought until the end," Rettinger said. "It's been a
fantastic season ... and we made a good run."