Mira Costa boys basketball coach Jeff Amaral didn’t need to consult the stat sheet. He knew exactly why his Mustangs fell to Crenshaw by a score of 62-57 Friday night after bringing the crowd to its feet with a 10-2 run to close the third quarter and grab a one point lead.
“Too many turnovers,” a frustrated Amaral said moments after the game. “Way too many turnovers in that fourth quarter.”
Indeed, Costa turned the ball over 18 times over the course of the sloppy-but-exciting game and at least 10 of those miscues came in the fourth quarter when Crenshaw’s superior athleticism forced the Mustangs into bad pass after bad pass.
Once again Costa’s star point guard, 5-foot-10 Dylan Kim, appeared to be suffering the after-effects of a horrific fall on his tailbone two weeks ago during the semifinals of the Mira Costa Pacific Shores tournament. Although he finished with 12 points, most of that came on three late 3-pointers when Costa was trying to mount a furious comeback against an increasingly confident Crenshaw team. In the first half, he was a non-presence thanks to his injury and Crenshaw’s game plan.
“Going into the game, our plan was to make sure Kim didn’t get going,” Crenshaw coach Ed Waters said. “We really focused on stopping him and Gavin Reagan.”
With its two leaders facing suffocating defensive pressure, Costa was led by Quenton Jackson, a springy, sometimes reckless 6-foot-4 forward, who scored 15 points on a variety of power moves to the hoop, full-court fast-break finishes and even a couple of outside jumpers. The Mustangs big man inside, the 6-foot-7 Reagan, didn’t see the ball much and finished with a quiet 8 points and five rebounds. Sam Sturges, who hit the running, buzzer-beating scoop shot that earned the Mustangs a 43-43 lead after three quarters, chipped in with 9 points.
The game started with one of those power outages that seem to be plaguing Manhattan Beach lately, as neither team could score in the first two minutes. But Jackson finally broke the ice by hitting one of two foul shots, while on the other end Aaron Edison, Crenshaw’s 6-foot-2 senior star, was powering his way to the basket every time he touched the ball.
Edison drilled four foul shots to give Crenshaw its first lead at 11-10 near the end of the first quarter, but Reagan answered with a 10-foot jumper and Costa was clinging to a 12-11 lead as the second quarter started.
The Mustangs pushed out to a 19-13 lead behind Sturges, who took advantage of all the attention given to Kim by hitting a 3-pointer and then swooping in for a put-back of a Reagan miss. But just when it looked like Costa was carving out a comfortable edge, Edison hit a 10-foot jumper in the lane, a 15-foot baseline jumper and finally an NBA-range trifecta to give Crenshaw a 23-22 lead at halftime.
At that point, Edison had scored 15 of Crenshaw’s 23 points and Costa went to a triangle-and-two defense in an effort to cool him down. It worked, as he only scored five points in the second half. Unfortunately for the Mustangs, all that defensive attention on Edison opened the door for their second best player, 6-foot sophomore guard Chris Kendricks, who began drilling three-pointers and stutter-stepping his way to the hoop. First he hit a get-out-of-my-way drive, then drained a long trey, and finally stole the ball and drove coast-to-coast to give Crenshaw a 40-33 lead.
But Kim awoke to drill two three’s, Jackson soared in for a nifty put back of a Reagan miss, and when Sturges scooped up a loose ball after a frantic scrum he split two defenders and threw up a wild scoop shot that hit off the backboard and caromed in just before the buzzer sounded, bringing the crowd to its feet and giving Costa a 43-42 lead.
But that’s when it all fell apart, as Kendricks continued to take over from Edison, who was content to let his sidekick dominate the ball and finish with 20 points, most of them in the second half. When 6-foot-3 Curtis Calbert, who hadn’t taken a shot in the first half, suddenly drilled two trifectas late in the fourth all the air went out of Fisher Gym and the Mustangs were left with a 7-4 record as they take the holiday week off before heading to San Diego for the Torrey Pines tournament in San Diego and their first round game Dec. 26.
Meanwhile, Redondo Union, ranked fifth in the LA Times pre-season projections, pulled out a 55-54 thriller over Centennial of Corona, CA. in the semifinals of the Tarkanian Classic at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas. The win, which helped mitigate the sting of a first round, 16 point loss in the Chicago Elite Classic two weeks ago, propelled the Sea Hawks into Saturday night’s championship game.
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