All Ball Sports: Costa defense shuts out Loyola in fourth quarter
by Paul Teetor It was bound to happen sooner or later. Wednesday night just happened to be the perfect time for the Mira Costa boys basketball team to pitch a fourth quarter shutout. Five years into the Coach Neal Perlmutter era, the style of play he favors is clear: his teams are patient on offense and suffocating on defense. If you don’t play all-in, tenacious D you won’t play at all. Indeed, you won’t even make the team. The result: a lot of close, low scoring games – mostly victories for the Mustangs. The tenacious style he demands reached a new high point on Thanksgiving Eve when his team held high-scoring Loyola scoreless in the fourth quarter to nail down a 57-46 victory that kept the Mustangs undefeated in the young season at 5-0. Not only had holding a team scoreless for an entire quarter never happened in his five years at Costa, but it had never happened in his entire coaching career. But with his defense-first coaching approach it was bound to happen sooner or later. Perlmutter made his rep locally by turning around a West program from a doormat to a CIF-winning powerhouse in just three years. After that near-miracle, he was hired to revive a dispirited Mira Costa…
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