Redondo Union boys hoops team prevails over towering Santa Margarita lineup in CIF playoff victory
Redondo Union Ryse Williams muscles to the hoop in the Sea Hawks win over Santa Margarita Friday night. Photos
The Redondo boys basketball team was on the verge of a full-on meltdown Friday night as its 21-point lead over Santa Margarita shrank down to five with more than two minutes left – plenty of time for a team that had already beaten Redondo once already this year to do it again.
That’s when super-sub Zekiah Lovett, the Sea Hawks’ 6-foot-2 junior guard, made the play of the game. Santa Margarita’s slick point guard Kaden Rasheed was bringing the ball up at half-court when Lovett squared him up, anticipated which way he would go and slapped the ball loose. Both players dove for the ball but Lovett came up with it and raced all the way to the bucket for a slam-dunk that brought the worried crowd screaming to its feet and stopped the Eagles comeback dead in its tracks.
“I poked it loose and saw an open lane,” Lovett explained moments after the game ended with Redondo on top by a score of 85-77. “It was only my third dunk of the year.”
The win moved Redondo into the semi-finals of the Open Division Consolation bracket, where it will host Damien Tuesday night. The victory at least raised the theoretical possibility that if Redondo wins the Consolation bracket the CIF could place it into the Open Division once again, this time for the state championships.
But Redondo Interim Head Coach Vic Martin said he wasn’t worried that would happen and that it is much more likely Redondo will be placed in the Division 1 state championship bracket.
“I think we’re playing for our seeding in Division I,” Martin said. “Typically, the state Open Division includes the four semi-finalists from each section. They would only move a team like us up if one of the four teams from another section were really awful. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”
Still, Martin conceded that the way the consolation brackets work, there’s not as much incentive to win games as in the regular playoffs. For example, the team Redondo beat by just two points last Tuesday night, Santa Monica Crossroads, will likely be placed in Division 2 and have a much easier path to a state championship than they would if they had beaten Redondo and ended up being placed in the State Division 1 bracket. Conversely, if Redondo had lost that game they would have been headed for the Division 2 state playoffs and a glide path to a state championship.
But Martin said the incentive to lose these consolation bracket games never entered his mind.
“We always play to win,” he said. “Always.”
Indeed, Redondo proved that once again Friday night as it faced a team that towered over them with four 6-foot-8 players, led by power forward Adrease Jackson, who topped the Eagles with 26 points and 15 rebounds. Redondo only has one player in that height category, 6-foot-9 junior center Quinn Collins, who leads the team in rebounding. Power forward Isaiah Tyler is only 6-foot-3, as is shooting star Ryse Williams. Their two starting guards, Tyler Murrell and Jailen Moore, are 6-foot and 6-foot-1, respectively.
“People overlook us because we’re so small,” Martin said. “They forget about how much heart we have.”
Friday night that heart translated into superior quickness on defense, getting to almost every loose ball, swarming the Eagle rebounders when they came down with the ball and making sure to look for Ryse Williams every chance they got.
It was a formula that has worked all season – their record is now 25-5, with a fifth straight Bay League title – and it worked again against a team ranked 42 spots higher in the state of California, a team that was coming off a tough 3-point loss to high-flying Bishop Montgomery Tuesday night.
The Eagles looked like that same tough team for most of the first half, as they jumped out to an 8-4 lead behind some strong inside play by Jackson, who was dominating the paint area. But Moore converted a difficult baseline drive and super-quick Jace Bass came off the bench for two power drives that pulled the Sea Hawks into a 10-10 tie and then an 18-16 lead at the end of the first quarter.
Behind the usual sharp shooting from Williams and Moore and some dynamic all-court play from Lovett the Hawks roared out to a 10-point lead at 44-34 and ended the half up by 44-38.
Redondo rode a barrage of 3-pointers from Williams and Moore – “I told the kids to fire away tonight, because we knew Santa Margarita had the height advantage inside,” Martin said – and they kept finding the target as the lead grew to 70-49 at the start of the fourth quarter.
That’s when Santa Margarita being using typical Redondo tactics – full-court pressure, double-teaming the ball and igniting fast breaks at every opportunity – to storm back to within 5 points and set the stage for Lovett’s strip of Rasheed and his bring-down-the-hammer dunk that thwarted the comeback.
Williams, as usual, led the Sea Hawks with 27 points, followed by Lovett with 21 and Moore with 16.
And so the Sea Hawks, who lost five of their top six players and saw Coach Reggie Morris take a one-year leave of absence, continued their wild ride that no one could have predicted before the season started.
“We’re having a lot of fun,” Martin said. “We’re having a blast.”
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