Fairfax Beats Cleveland to Tighten Race

Sean Higgins scored 22 points and Chris Mills added 20 as second-ranked Fairfax High overcame some bad first-half shot selection to beat No. 6 Cleveland, 56-53, in a Valley 4-A League game Friday night at Cleveland.

Cleveland (11-6 overall and 8-1 in league) has a one-half game lead with three games remaining in the seven-team league. Fairfax has only two games left. If the Cavaliers win all of them, they win the title. But the Lions would win the league if they beat Hamilton and Reseda and Cleveland losses to Reseda, Hamilton or Kennedy on the basis of a better overall record excluding tournaments.

Both teams are expected to beat Reseda (5-12 overall) and Hamilton (4-13), but the Kennedy game could be tough--which was the case Friday night.

The score was tied at halftime, 23-23, before Fairfax (16-4, 8-2) put on a 10-4 run to start the third quarter as Higgins started hitting from the baseline. But Cleveland came back to take the lead going into the fourth quarter, 36-35.

From that point, the score went back and forth. Cleveland even chipped away at Fairfax’s seven-point lead with 50 seconds remaining until it was down to three with 12 seconds left. That’s when the game was decided.

After the basket, Trevor Wilson stole the ball for Cleveland, was fouled and hit both free throws to make it a one-point game, 54-53. Cleveland then stole the in-bounds pass with eight seconds to play.

Andre Anderson took the ball on the right side of the basket, dribbled around the top of the key to the left side and started to drive toward the basket. Just as the shot went up from seven feet out, he crashed into Fairfax’s J.D. Green and was called for a charge with four seconds left.

“Any time the game is that close, if I’m an official, I don’t know if I make that (charge) call,” Cleveland Coach Bob Braswell said. “But I don’t want to use that as an excuse. We just didn’t execute our game plan. We didn’t want to give Higgins a lot of free shots, but we did in the second half.”

“This was a playoff-intensity game,” Fairfax Coach Harvey Kitani said. “Our guys showed they could come in here and handle the crowd Cleveland has and play well.”

The UCLA-bound Wilson, with Bruin Coach Walt Hazzard in attendence, led Cleveland with 16, while Greer added 14.

PREP BASKETBALL GAME OF THE WEEK

TIMES CITY TOP 10

THROUGH FEB. 2

No School League 1 Crenshaw Central 2 Fairfax Valley 3 Carson Marine 4 Palisades Central 5 Fremont Central 6 Cleveland Valley 7 Westchester Central 8 San Pedro Marine 9 Manual Arts Marine 10 Dorsey Central