Empire League : Katella Rolls to Victory : Knights Get Big Lead on Cold Los Alamitos

The next time Los Alamitos High School plays Katella in basketball, Griffin Coach Steve Brooks might consider running his players through a half-hour scrimmage just before tipoff.

Maybe then, they’ll be loose, relaxed and ready to play the kind of game Brooks knows they can.

They weren’t ready Friday night. The Griffins made 2 of 19 shots in the first period. They turned the ball over six times and had four shots blocked.

The Knights opened a 15-2 lead in the first seven minutes and went on to a 69-57 Empire League victory at Katella High. The win creates a four-way tie for first place between Katella, Los Alamitos, El Dorado and Cypress.

The Griffins played well from the second quarter on. They shot 55% (22 of 40) during the final three quarters and were outscored by only one point, 55-54.

Los Alamitos threatened in the third quarter and again in the fourth when the Griffins cut the lead to four, 53-47, with 3:43 remaining. Katella’s Jim Anderson answered with a three-point play, and the Knights regained control.

Katella made 9 of 10 free throws in the final two minutes, five by Wayne Petrakis and four by Bob Erbst, to pull away.

“Katella is too good of a team to dig a 15-2 hole at the start and expect to come back,” Brooks said. “We turned the ball over and missed too many layups at the start of the ballgame.”

Had the game been a party, the Griffins would have been fashionably late. Maybe Los Alamitos center Moe Warner should have declined the invitation altogether.

Warner, a 6-foot 5-inch junior, turned the ball over on traveling violations four times in the first quarter. He missed all seven of his shots and appeared disoriented against Katella’s 6-8 Erbst, who blocked four shots in the first period and eight in the game.

Erbst, posting up on anyone who covered him, scored 11 points in the first period. The Griffins shut him down in the second and third quarters, when the USC-bound senior scored just two points, but he came back with nine in the last quarter to finish with 22.

Richard Lucas scored 17 points for the Knights, and Petrakis added 10. Ryan Blossey led Los Alamitos with 19 points, including 12 in the third quarter to help rally the Griffins from a 15-point halftime deficit (31-16) to a 4-point deficit (43-39) to begin the fourth quarter.

Warner recovered from the first quarter to finish with 13 points, and J.T. Snow added 10 for Los Alamitos.

LOS ALAMITOS (57)--Snow 10, Schmitz 4, Treece 7, Warner 13, Blossey 19, Loe 4.

KATELLA (69)--Sunu 6, Anderson 6, Lucas 17, Erbst 22, Baldwin 6, Petrakis