Palisades coach displeased with his team’s effort against Fairfax

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“A good old-fashioned butt-whipping” is how Palisades boys’ basketball Coach James Paleno summed up Tuesday’s Western League game against Fairfax. And he’s right. Trust me, I was there.

Fairfax raced to a 18-5 first-quarter lead on its way to a 78-47 trouncing that has me wondering ... Is this the same Fairfax team that almost got upset by Palisades less than three weeks ago?

Paleno has coached the Dolphins to over 300 victories -- 320 to be exact -- and what bothered him more than the lopsided score was that, for perhaps the first time all season, he felt his team didn’t compete as hard as it could.

“It’s one thing to lose, but our effort today was poor,” Paleno said. “We can make excuses like we just played yesterday or the kids had finals this morning, but they’re just excuses. Fairfax showed why it’s ranked where it is and I’m disappointed we didn’t play to our ranking.”

Fairfax is No. 5 and Palisades is No. 21 in The Times’ top 25 ranking of Southland teams, but the Lions made a strong case to move up a spot or two. Coach Harvey Kitani’s assessment of his team?

“Collectively, we played with more discipline than last time and we knocked down some threes,” he said. “But I still believe we can get better.”

If the Lions play like they did on Tuesday, the reigning state champions may already be good enough to repeat.

-- Steve Galluzzo

-- Image from www.rednoseday.com