Southwest Takes First With Win at Canyons

The crowd at College of the Canyons on Wednesday night looked more like a crowd watching tennis than a crowd watching basketball. Both Canyons and L. A. Southwest favor the fastbreak, and the well-paced play kept heads turning.

After Southwest ran past Canyons, 99-95, however, the crowd was subdued and heads were hanging.

With the win, Southwest is alone in first place in the Mountain Valley Conference with a 5-0 record. Southwest is 21-4 and hasn’t lost since Jan. 3, when it dropped a nonconference decision to Oxnard.

Canyons is 4-1, 15-8 overall. Both teams are favored to end the season on top of the conference and will meet Feb. 21 at the Sports Arena on the final day of conference play.

“This was the biggest game of the season,” Canyons forward Vincent Ray said. “What I have to say about it you can’t print.”

Excuse Ray if he felt a little awkward. He’s not accustomed to losing. As Canyons’ leading scorer, he came up with 20 points. That’s good enough for some, but the 6-3 sophomore had scored more than 25 points in each of Canyons’ previous five games.

Teammate James Mixon took the spotlight--what there was of it for Canyons--with 26 points. And that, too, is good enough for some, but not when comparing offense with that of Bruce Chew. Chew, a 6-4 sophomore guard, scored from all over the Canyons court, ending with a game-high 36 points.

“Chew was magnificent,” Southwest Coach Leon Henry said. “We needed him to be on his game tonight and, damn, he was on his game.”

Canyons wasn’t, leading Coach Lee Smelser to ponder what happened. Canyons held a 10-point lead in the first half, but Southwest chipped away and started to baffle the Canyons’ offense.

Canyons looked as if it needed a timeout when Southwest started its comeback, but Smelzer opted to keep the game going. Southwest led by four at halftime.

“We’re a running team, and we don’t call timeouts when we’re running,” Smelzer said. “I didn’t call a timeout because I didn’t want to slow it down. But even though I didn’t, our guys stopped running anyway.”

Size proved to be another factor in favor of Southwest. Roy Jones, 6-9, and Brian Brundage played well inside and eventually proved to be too much for Anthony Hines, Canyons’ 6-7 center. To his credit, Hines finished with 17 points and 13 rebounds.

“We do have the better size,” Henry said. “We’re just a bigger team and we had too much power on the inside.”

Smelzer had another theory in summing up the game’s matches--or mismatches.

“Size didn’t have anything to do with it,” Smelzer said. He was partially correct. More than once, Canyons’ guard Derek Hughes (5-11) stole passes and rebounds away from Brundage and Jones. “We just needed to shoot better.”

Said Ray: “I don’t think the size or speed meant anything. We just had to get the shots and we had to make some baskets.”

Ray couldn’t explain his off night.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I was off. Way off. I just couldn’t hit anything. This sure wasn’t the night to do that.”

Chew, who averages 17 points a game, scored 12 points in the first half and 24 in the second.

“I’ve been waiting for him to come through for us like he did tonight,” Henry said. “He came through very well, if you ask me.”

Although Canyons has put considerable polish on its budding fast break offense since the beginning of the season, Henry wasn’t overly impressed.

“We were surprised that they ran so much because I had told my guys that they could not run with us,” he said. “All season, we have run everybody off the court in the second half.”

The game completed the first round of conference play for both teams. Canyons will play at home Saturday against Valley at 7:30 p.m.

“We just have to continue as if every game was a championship game,” Smelzer said. “We just have to hope that Southwest stumbles along the way.”

If Southwest doesn’t stumble, and Canyons again defeats the other conference foes, look for a conference championship to be settled at the Sports Arena.

Southwest 50 49 -- 99

Canyons 46 49 -- 95

SOUTHWEST--Chew 36; Jones 23; Webb 15; Williams 9; Brundage 0 and 11 rebounds; Chaney 6; Blowe 8.

CANYONS--Mixon 26; Ray 20; Hines 17 and 13 rebounds; Honaker 12; Stapp 12; Aitken 6; Hughes 2 and 5 assists.