The Redondo boys basketball team raced out to a 23-8 lead Tuesday night against Dorsey in its fifth playoff game of the postseason, and all the signs of an impending blowout were present and accounted for: The Sea Hawks’ famous full-court press was producing turnover after turnover, coach Reggie Morris was substituting players so frequently you needed a scorecard to follow the action, and the scoring was coming from all eight players in the Redondo rotation.
Then, just as suddenly, it all turned around and Dorsey went on a 23-11 run of its own to narrow the lead to 34-31 at halftime. In the end, the Sea Hawks hung on for a closer-than-it-sounds 79-69 victory, and Morris could only shake his head and smile ruefully when asked why his team played such a bipolar game.
“Because they’re teenagers,” he said. “We came out with great focus, got a nice lead, and then they got complacent. We started turning the ball over and missing easy shots and lost our focus. We have to maintain our focus for 32 minutes.”
Wednesday night’s win in the State Division 1 Regionals advanced Redondo to another home game, a second-round match-up with old foe St. John Bosco Saturday night that should provide a snapshot of Redondo’s before-and-after season. The Sea Hawks beat St. John Bosco by two points in the semifinals of its own Pac Shores Tournament last November, but that was before 6-foot-9 sophomore sensation Billy Preston abruptly quit the team in mid-season and started playing a few days later for Prime Prep in Dallas, Texas. Preston – who ironically had quit St. John Bosco in mid-season last year – led the Sea Hawks in that game with 25 points and 15 rebounds.
Now they will have to take on Bosco without Preston’s inside game and dominant rebounding, instead relying on 6-foot-4 Cameron Williams and 6-foot-5 Isaiah Jackson to provide at least a semblance of an inside presence against Bosco’s much taller front-line. Asked to assess his team’s chances against Bosco, Morris declined to speculate.
“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this game,” he said. “I haven’t even begun to think about Bosco.”
When Morris does look at the tape, he will see that the key part of the game was the opening of the third period, when Dorsey fans were expecting the Dons’ late first-half momentum to carry over and the Sea Hawk faithful were fearing the worst: a second-half meltdown after failing to crush Dorsey when it had the chance at 23-8.
Instead the Sea Hawks came out re-invigorated and, to use Morris’s favorite adjective, focused. It started with Redondo’s best player, 6-foot-2 guard Leland Green, who fought his way out of a scrum under the basket and powered up for a stick back that raised the lead to 36-31.
Then 6-foot-1 guard Morgan Means, Redondo’s best pure shooter, drilled two consecutive three-pointers, the first from the top of the key and the second from the right corner following a sneaky steal by 5-foot-2 point guard Elijah Nesbit. Cameron High added to the momentum with a layup off a great feed from Ryse Williams, and when Means connected on yet another trifecta following another Nesbit steal it was suddenly 47-32 and Redondo’s 15-point lead had been restored faster than you can say Morgan Means Business.
The lead remained in double digits through the start of the fourth quarter, but the victory was still in doubt when Dorsey ripped off yet another run, this time 9-0, to crawl back to within 64-55 with four minutes left, forcing Morris to call a timeout while the small-but-vocal Dorsey contingent went nuts calling for their boys to keep the pressure up.
Redondo responded yet again, with Ryse Williams drilling a foul-line jumper, Green hitting three free throws and Jackson two more to push the lead back to 71-60. Dorsey whittled it down to seven at 73-66, but now there was only a minute left and with Nesbit controlling the ball Redondo hung on, hitting a bunch of free throws down the stretch to keep a frantic Dorsey team at bay.
Means led the Sea Hawks with 17 points, mainly on the basis of his three trifectas early in the third period that proved to be the turning point of the game. Green had 12 points, Cameron High 11, Cameron Williams 7, and glue guy Ryan Reeves chipped in with 6, including a corner three near the end of the third period that kept the lead in double digits.
Dorsey was led by 6-foot-1 guard Lafayette Dorsey with 23 points – that’s right, Dorsey’s leading scorer was named Dorsey – and 6-foot-2 junior Cameron Evans, who added 19. No one else was in double figures.
In a very real sense, Redondo was looking at a mirror image of itself Wednesday night: a pressing, fast-breaking team full of great athletes without a dominant big man or much of an inside presence. “We’re used to playing teams who are much bigger than us,” Morris said. “Tonight was an exception.”
Saturday night’s game, which starts at 7:30, should feel more familiar: St. John Bosco is led by 6-foot-9 Vance Jackson, a junior forward/center who is already being recruited by big-time Division 1 colleges.
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