All Ball Sports: Costa joy turns into heartbreak, Redondo advances

Paxx Bellby Paul Teetor

Live by a single point, die by a single point.

That was the roller coaster story for the Mira Costa boys basketball team this week as it won its first-round playoff game 57-56 — and then lost its second-round playoff game by the equally close score of 67-66.

By failing to advance beyond the second round, the Mustangs season ended with a final 24-6 record and 6-2 in the Bay League, good for second place behind Redondo.

Both of the home game thrillers this week were marked by bizarre finishes that left the Mustang fans buzzing over what could have been, what might have been and what should have been.

In the first game Wednesday night against Oaks Christian, Costa had a three-point lead with 15 seconds to go. Oaks Christian had possession of the ball. As the OC players advanced into the front court, Costa was intent on preventing them from getting a good look at a 3-point shot that would tie the game and send it to overtime.

With Mustang players spread out on the perimeter chasing the ball, an OC player drove to the basket and inexplicably took a 2-point shot that was good. But it did them no good because they were down by three points and had no timeouts left. By the time Costa inbounded the ball the buzzer quickly sounded and the game was over.

Costa fans breathed a huge sigh of relief and felt fortunate to have survived their team’s first game of the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs.

Forty-eight hours later on Friday night those same emotions were reversed by those same fans. They were angry over the one-point loss to Oak Christian and were convinced that a phantom foul call by the refs with 1.5 seconds left had cost their team the game. At the very least, many were saying in the immediate aftermath that it should have gone to an overtime period where the players would have decided the winner, not the refs.

Oaks Christian featured one of the top players in Southern California, a 6-foot freshman shooting guard named Will Conroy who came into the game averaging 28 points. His father is an assistant coach at USC, so he has been well coached from his earliest days handling a basketball. 

“We tried to build a wall against him and force someone else to beat us,” Costa Coach Neal Perlmutter said. “We did a good job, holding him to 10 points.”

Despite the Costa defense targeting him, Conroy made the key play of the game.

With the Mustangs holding a 3-point lead at 66-63 with a minute and 50 seconds left, Costa called a timeout to make sure they navigated the next 110 seconds successfully.

But as soon as play resumed, Conroy stole the ball and went the length of the court for a layup that drew OC within one point of Costa.

With the entire crowd standing and screaming – creating a cauldron of sound and emotion – Costa turned the ball over twice more and allowed OC to pull into a tie at 66-66.

“We made a couple of bad passes into traffic,” Perlmutter said. “That really hurt us.”

With just five seconds to go, the Mustangs had the ball and frantically looked for a good shot to win the game. Finally, they threw up a prayer that missed with two seconds to go. Both teams fought tooth and nail for the rebound, with several players from both teams crashing to the hardwood floor.

Just when it looked like the game was going to end in a tie with an overtime period, the two refs panicked, looked at each other uncertainly, and suddenly blew the whistle.

Foul on Mira Costa!

Costa fans and staff went crazy, and rightly so. All Ball was able to look at a replay of the contested call on a cell phone several times, and although there was a lot of contact in the rebound scrum, one thing was crystal clear: there was no obvious foul by either team.

Sure, there was a lot of pushing and shoving – by both teams – in the frantic final seconds after the Costa shot missed, but nothing resembling a real foul that gave one team an advantage over the other.

But still the whistle blew and VC now had two chances to win the game on a foul shot.

The home crowd reacted in shock and disbelief as both teams marched to the other end of the court for two foul shots.  The VC player hit the first and missed the second to give his team a 67-66 lead and the apparent victory.

But there was one more twist: Costa’s 6-foot-5 junior forward Strax Dragicevic, a star-to-be who came to Costa from Serbia, grabbed the rebound, took two dribbles and flung the ball high into the air on target, trying for one of those miracle hoops featured in ESPN’s nightly lineup of the top 10 plays.

But this time the ball, which hung in the air as time stood still for both teams and their fans, bounced off the front of the rim as the OC players celebrated their good fortune and the Mira Costa fans grumbled and groaned that a hard-earned victory had been stolen from them. 

The complaints were compounded because a VC player had blatantly shoved

a Mustang player to the floor late in the third quarter with no foul call on him from the refs. The Costa player charged back at him and, for a couple of seconds, it looked like the game might be marred by a brawl.

The refs stepped in to prevent any further aggression.             

And the result? A foul called on Costa, an inexplicable call given that the whole fracas was started by a shove from a VC player.

Despite the bad calls, Perlmutter refused to blame the refs for the tough, season-ending loss.

“We had our chances,” he said. “We cost ourselves the game. We didn’t take care of the ball down the stretch.”

Although it was a tough way for the Mustangs to end their season, it was also a very exciting game with many lead changes. Indeed, neither team ever led by more than 6 points.

Costa jumped out to a 5-0 lead behind a corner jumper from junior guard Royce Reilly and a 3-pointer from Strax. But Oak Christian roared back to tie it at 8-8, and from there it was a dog-fight with VC leading 36-35 at the half.

But Paxx Bell, the 6-foot-4 junior who led the Mustangs all season, opened the second half with a flying dunk that charged up the crowd and provided his teammates with an emotional lift. 

While Costa’s defense was set up to contain the quicksilver guard Conroy, too often he insisted on forcing the shot and ignored wide-open teammates.

Finally, late in the third quarter and into the fourth, he started finding open teammates and they started sinking the shots he generated for them. VC opened up a 52-48 lead and appeared to be taking control of the game.

But the Mustangs continually got the ball to Strax at the top of the key, and he drove left or right with either hand and usually got all the way to the hoop.

“They didn’t have an answer for Strax, or for Paxx,” Perlmutter said.

With the help of two consecutive stick-backs by 6-foot-7 center Logan Dugdale, Costa clawed its way to a 66-63 lead with under two minutes left.

But under fierce defensive pressure from Oak Christian, the 3-point lead melted away until the phantom foul call with 1.5 seconds left gave VC two chances to win the game.

They only needed one. 

Strax finished the game with 18 points and 5 rebounds, Paxx Bell with 14 points and 7 boards, and 

Logan Dugdale with a double-double of 10 points and 10 boards.

The Paxx and Strax Show will be back next season for Costa better than ever.

Costa Girls Fight Through Adversity

The Mira Costa Girls Basketball team finished their season Saturday night after advancing to the second round of the Division 1 playoffs with a loss to Valencia.

Kylee Yeh, Costa’s ball handling, shooting wizard of a point guard, missed most of the season with knee injuries and did not play in the playoffs. Yeh was the Bay League MVP last year when she led the Mustangs to the Bay League title as a sophomore.

“Losing the Bay League MVP to injuries was a huge blow to the team,” Coach Jeff Herdman said. “But we’re confident she’ll recover and be back as good as ever next season.”

Herdman cited victories over Troy and Notre Dame as the highlights of a 15-13 season.

He also singled out seniors Kenia Bohman, Ella Nickerson and Adrianna Martinez as players who helped keep Costa competitive when their star, Yeh, went down.

“We also had a really good freshman center, Mira Nyman, who kept us in a lot of games this year,” he said. “Getting 15 wins and qualifying for the playoffs made this a successful year.”

Sea Hawks advanced to quarter finals

The Redondo Union High School boys basketball team rolled over Corona Centennial 69-57 at home

Tuesday night to advance in the CIF Southern Section Open Division playoffs.

The win enabled Redondo to win its pool play in Pool C and to host a quarterfinal playoff game against

La Mirada. The win also secured the Sea Hawks a spot in the State tournament.

The Sea Hawks were clinging to a four-point lead in the waning moments of the third quarter when its

role players stepped up and put the game away.

Redondo got 3-pointers from Devin Wright, Zach Khatib and Joey Albala to build a double-digit lead.

“It’s the playoffs, you know. Everybody’s got to compete, everybody’s got to perform,” Redondo coach

Reggie Morris Jr. said. “It was a team effort and those guys came in and made shots. Devin’s been pretty

solid for us, Zach’s a bigtime shooter and Joey’s really starting to find his stroke, but they made their

shots.”

Kai Patton (15 points) converted a second-chance layup before Jaidyn Smith’s putback cut Centennial’s

deficit to 52-50 with 1:18 to play in the third.

With 41 seconds left in the quarter, Albala came up with a steal at midcourt before finding Wright for the finish to put Redondo up 54-50. After a Centennial miss, Wright’s buzzer-beating 3-pointer gave the Sea Hawks a seven-point lead heading into the fourth.

Redondo kept building its lead in the fourth quarter and won by 12 points.

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. ER