Facing a Redondo boys basketball team with higher height, deeper depth and quicker quickness at every position, the Mira Costa Mustangs had only one option Tuesday night: start out bombing away from 3-point land and keep bombing until the end.
And it worked – for one quarter.
But in the bitter end Redondo simply outclassed a gutty Mira Costa team by a final score of 74-51 in the first installment of the annual backyard brawl of the long-time neighbors and rivals.
The game got off to an exciting start as Sea Hawk senior star Zekiah LoVett drilled a three-pointer from the top of the key to get the scoring underway. Mustang guard Morgan Clark answered with a corner three-pointer to tie it, so LoVett simply launched another trifecta from the same spot and connected again.
Mira Costa guard Lucas Hobbs, who played for Redondo as a freshman two years ago, nailed a three to tie it again at 6-6. Redondo’s other star, 6-foot-8 center Quinn Collins, rolled to the hoop for an easy bucket, but Hobbs drove to tie it again and then hit another trifecta to give the Mustangs their first lead of the night, 11-8.
At this point it looked like you could throw out their records – Redondo at the top of the Bay League, Costa near the bottom – and settle back for an old-fashioned barn burner.
But LoVett, who has been known to let his concentration drift in and out of games depending on the score, wasn’t about to let the Mustangs think they had a chance. Pulling up from 35 feet, he threw up a moon-shot that drew gasps from the crowd when it hit nothing but net.
“We showed him film and talked to him about playing with greater concentration and focus, and tonight he did exactly what we wanted him to do: he took good shots in the flow of the offense,” Redondo Coach Ali Parvaz said. “Well, except for one shot, an air-balled three pointer.”
Mustang center Henry Householter connected on a power drive, but Kyle Carter, hero of Redondo’s one-point win over Peninsula last Friday night, hit a trey to give Redondo a 14-13 lead it would never relinquish.
Householter hit two foul shots to tie it at 18-all with a few seconds left but Jaiden Winfrey came off the Sea Hawk bench and answered with a corner three that gave Redondo a 21-18 lead as the first quarter ended.
The Sea Hawk lead grew steadily in the second quarter behind several more guided missiles from LoVett – he hit six three-pointers on the night and finished with 25 points – and by halftime it was 42-24 and the game was effectively over. Both teams played their reserves for most of the fourth quarter and after the game Parvaz’s focus had already turned to the next game, at Morningside Friday night, and then hosting a tough Inglewood squad next Tuesday night.
If they want to win a sixth straight Bay League title they will have to win those two games and then beat Mira Costa again, this time at Costa.
Late in the game, some fans were overheard talking about Billy Preston, the 6-foot-9 former Redondo star who quit the team mid-season three years ago as a 17-year-old sophomore and attended three more high schools – for a grand total of five schools in four years – before becoming a five-star recruit — the 15th ranked player in his class of 2017 — for hoops powerhouse Kansas.
A few hours before Kansas’s first game this season Preston was involved in a one-car crash and Kansas refused to let him play until it completed an investigation into how he had gotten the expensive car. Then over the weekend Kansas announced Preston had left school and was headed overseas to play in Europe.
Whether he will enter the NBA draft next June – and actually be drafted — now depends on how he performs playing against grown men and experienced professionals in Europe.
Contact: paulteetor@verizon.net. Follow @paulteetor.
