Mustangs come from behind, on way to semi-finals against Mater Dei
by Paul Teetor
The Mira Costa magic carpet ride continued Tuesday night.
The Mustang boys basketball team overcame yet another big deficit with suffocating defense to defeat Damien High School of La Verne 49-41 in front of a packed house at the Fisher Athletic Complex.
It was a tense, back-and-forth game of runs, with Damien holding a lead of seven points late in the first half, only to see Costa turn it around in the second half and pull away to win by eight points.
The Mustangs will now play in the CIF Division 1 semifinals Friday night at Mater Dei, which handed them one of only two losses they suffered during the regular season.
Mira Costa Coach Neal Perlmutter could barely contain his excitement moments after the final horn sounded.
“It feels incredible,” Perlmutter said. “I’m so proud of these kids. They fought so hard for this victory.”
The goal he has been preaching since he took over five years ago – winning a CIF title – is now just two wins away.
“Our goal from day one has been to win the CIF championship,” he said. “I don’t know how many people believed that we could do it, but I’ve been telling the guys that we’re on a march and we’re heading toward the final battle, and we’ve believed since day one that we can win this thing.”
Sophomore Jacob De Armas scored seven points, and brought a suffocating defense to Tuesday victory over Damien.
Before the game got going, all the buzz was about Damien’s 6-foot-11 center, Nate Garcia, who had been singled out in a recent LA Times article as an emerging force on the local hoops scene after a 29-point effort in a Damien playoff game. He came into this game averaging 20 points and 15 rebounds in the playoffs.
During warmups, it was clear that Garcia was the real deal: at 260 pounds he has tree-trunk legs, surfboard shoulders and a blond ponytail. Naturally, much of Costa’s game plan centered around how to prevent Garcia from dominating the game.
“The plan coming in was to send two guys on him,” Perlmutter said. “In the first half he only hurt us on the offensive glass. He had three put-backs, but he didn’t have any post-ups where he scored.”
Starting out, Trey Pearce and Preston Ezewiro were his primary defenders, and other guys helped out as needed. Both Mustangs are 6-foot-7, and they proved to be tall enough to contain Garcia while the Mustangs raced out to a 10-3 lead.
Point guard Will Householter got the scoring started when he threw a bullet pass that found Pearce underneath the hoop for an easy layup. Ezewiro drilled a corner three, Nick Lundy grabbed a missed shot and put it back in and when Costa’s super sophomore Jacob De Armas found Ezewiro for a rim-rattling dunk, suddenly the Mustang lead was 10-3 and the home crowd was delirious.
Damien called timeout and when play resumed they went on an 11-4 run that pulled them within 15-14 at the end of the first quarter.
Early in the second quarter Garcia camped under the basket, snagged a rebound and put it back in to give Damien its first lead at 18-17. The lead grew to seven points at 28-21 with less than a minute left, but Ezewiro nailed a long three-pointer to pull the Mustangs within 28-24 at halftime.
As the game went along, two things were becoming clear: Garcia, although flaunting a sculpted build on a massive body that would have been at home in Sunday’s Super Bowl, does not yet have the footwork to be a post monster on the interior. And second, Damien’s other players are not skilled at finding ways to get the ball into the post effectively enough to set up Garcia to score.
Six-foot-seven Preston Ezewiro was the Mustang’s second leading scorer against Damien, with 12 points.
“We realized that either Preston or Trey could handle him by themselves, so that freed up our other guys to play lock-down defense,” Perlmutter said. “That was the big difference between the first half and the second half.”
Sure enough, the Mustangs dialed up the defensive pressure and Damien’s guards wilted. First Householter had a poke-away steal that he converted into a rare dunk for himself. Then on the very next possession he got another steal, and this time he drove the length of the court but instead of shooting it himself, he found a driving Lundy for an easy layup and suddenly Costa had a 32-30 lead.
Two late free throws by Lundy gave Costa a 36-35 lead at the end of the third quarter, setting up a furious finish.
The fourth quarter was dominated by the Mustangs defensive pressure. They held Damien to just four field goals and 13 points in the entire second half. Perlmutter has always been a defense-first coach, and it paid off big-time in this game.
Damien’s Xavier Clinton hit five three-pointers to make up for the offense that Garcia wasn’t providing, and he ended up leading them in scoring with 16 points.
Householter led the Mustangs with 15 points, followed by Ezewiro with 12, Lundy with 8 and De Armas with 7.
Now the Mustangs travel south to face their toughest challenge yet: beating Mater Dei, the biggest athletic powerhouse in the entire state, and a team that already beat them by 10 points back in December.
Will their magic carpet travel south to Orange County? Will their march to a CIf Championship continue?
Stay tuned.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor ER