by Paul Teetor
Redondo’s hoops dreams died a sudden, unexpected death late Friday night.
The Redondo boys basketball team has been trying, hoping and dreaming of a CIF Open Division title ever since Coach Reggie Morris came back four years ago to rebuild the team in his second stint at the helm of the Sea Hawks.
The Open Division is the best of the best in SoCal high school basketball.
Morris’ first four-year stint, from 2013 to 2017, resulted in one state title, a bunch of Bay League titles and several deep playoff runs. But so far, his second time around has not been as productive, although the Sea Hawks have continued to dominate the Bay League.
This season, with a team stacked with four-year players, seniors who had been through the hoops wars with him, Redondo was third-seeded in the CIF Southern Section Open Division and given a very good chance of advancing to the title game next Saturday night, where they probably would have played top-seeded powerhouse Sierra Canyon.
Given the kind of talent Redondo has in seniors Chace Holley, Devin Wright and its superstar SJ Madison, the Sea Hawks would have had a legit chance at upsetting Sierra Canyon or whomever they faced in the Open Division Final.
Instead, they fell two wins short of reaching the Championship game with a close-but-no-cigar 73-70 home loss to 12th seeded La Mirada Friday night in a quarterfinal game.
Despite having all the advantages – a home game thanks to their higher seed, a vociferous crowd cheering them on, and halftime and end-of-the-third-quarter leads – Redondo was unable to close the deal at crunch time.
When Chris Sanders hit a hoop in the paint in the fourth quarter, it seemed as if the Hawks had finally gotten control of Friday night’s game. Sanders’ 25th point of the night gave the Sea Hawks a five-point lead.
But Tristan Partida and Cisco Munoz hit consecutive 3-pointers for La Mirada to give the Matadores a one-point lead that they never relinquished.
The emotional, hard-fought game culminated in a scuffle in the post game handshake line.
Morris rose above the hard feelings between the opposing players and gave La Mirada its props for pulling off a major upset.
“La Mirada gets all the credit,” Morris said. “They were the tougher team. They were able to fight through adversity and they made plays and you have to tip your hat to them.”
Morris, who always has his teams play a pressing full-court, ferocious brand of defense, said the Sea Hawks let up on defense at the worst possible time – after they had led 42-40 at halftime and by 55-49 at the end of the third quarter.
“We’ve got to do a better job of answering the call and holding the line. We’ve got to play better defense,” he said. “We’ve got be better as a team as far as helping each other and rotating and just being tougher coming up with stops. We’ve been a pretty good defensive team the whole way and somehow, we’ve got to get back to that.”
La Mirada now will play at seventh-seeded Harvard-Westlake in the semifinals Tuesday.
“Team has been through a lot, been through a lot of resilience,” La Mirada coach Randy Oronoz said. “We just tried to stay together. Third quarters, we’ve had good quarters all year, we scheduled hard games all year, just for big moments like this.”
After Munoz’s 3-pointer, Andrew Castro gave La Mirada a 65-62 lead. With less than two minutes remaining, Redondo got to within one point on a pair of SJ Madison free throws, but Partida responded with two 3-pointers and the La Mirada lead was up to 71-64.
“Anytime you win some big playoff games, you want to lean on your seniors, especially when Gene Roebuck got in foul trouble,” Oronoz said of Partida. “He’s been a four-year guy for us. It doesn’t matter his size, he did a good job hitting big shots.”
For most of the game Redondo looked like it would be moving on to the next round.
Redondo took a 36-26 lead in the second quarter on a 3-pointer by Chace Holley, but La Mirada went on a 12-2 run to tie the game at 38-38.
The Sea Hawks took a 42-40 lead into halftime and early in the third quarter, Roebuck hit a 3-pointer to give the Matadores a 45-42 lead.
However, by the time the quarter ended, Redondo had a 55-49 lead.
SJ Madison and Kaiden Wilson finished with 18 points apiece for Redondo. Madison picked up his fourth foul in the third quarter. Holley finished with just three points. Morris said he was bothered by a foot injury suffered during the win over Corona Centennial earlier in the week in pool play.
Roebuck led La Mirada with 19 points before fouling out early in the fourth quarter. Munoz had 17 points and Partida finished with 15, all on 3-pointers.
Despite the loss, Redondo’s season is not over. The Sea Hawks will now await the pairings for the CIF State Regional. After winning their two pool play games, they qualified for a spot.
“We have to learn from this and get better from there,” Madison said. “Take it as a hit, luckily, we have another chance. Every single possession really matters, so those turnovers at the start of the game or the missed free throws, lazy fouls or lazy blow-bys, really affect the outcome of the game. If we fix those parts, that loss wouldn’t have happened.”
In the expanded Open Division, the Matadores were the 12th and final seed. They went 1-1 in Pool D.
“We get a chance to advance and a chance in the semis,” Oronoz said. “We don’t listen to the outside noise. No one believes those computer rankings anyways. If we believed we were 12th, we would have got our butt kicked …rankings are rankings. It’s a number in front of our name. You got to play 32 minutes and see what happens.”
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. ER
