Santiago Tournament : Valencia Hangs On, Beats Kennedy, 39-38
Valencia High School had enough things go wrong in the last 26 seconds of the Santiago Tournament final to have lost the game.
Somehow, Valencia won instead, defeating Kennedy, 39-38, in front of 300 in the Santiago gym.
Valencia had the ball and a three-point lead, 39-36, with 26 seconds left. Twice, the Tigers were forced to call timeout, unable to inbound the ball. Once the ball was in play, Bernie James was tripped by a Kennedy player, but instead of a foul the call was a held ball. Fortunately for Valencia, the possession arrow was pointing its way.
And the really tough part: Valencia missed four foul shots down the stretch.
Kennedy wasn’t able to take advantage of any of this, though, scoring only on a drive and layup by Wendell Lauderdale, who finished with 8 points, second only to Danny Davidson’s 9 for Kennedy, which played without starter Michael Keith, who has an ankle injury.
Kennedy (9-4) had the ball at the opposite end of the court with two seconds left, but Jeff Hansell’s long inbound pass to Jeff Howe glanced off Howe’s fingers and went out of bounds.
Valencia (9-3), which held a 10-2 lead at the game’s start, was led by Dennis Burbank’s 13 points. James added 12.
Valencia hit but 8 of 12 free throw attempts in the first half but still held an eight-point lead at halftime. Davidson completed a three-point play to cut it to five at the outset of the second half, eventually tying it in the fourth when he made a layup after forcing a turnover.
Kenndy’s sagging zone gave the bigger Valencia team trouble in the second half.
“We didn’t have much of a perimeter game to help us out,” said Ray Rodriguez, Valencia coach. “We were able to keep it in our tempo and low-scoring. If we had hit our free throws, we’d have had a big lead.”
In other games:
Buena Park 79, Bolsa Grande 71--Gary Hunter scored 31 points and Kevin Grady had 26 for the Coyotes, who won the third-place game. Bolsa Grande’s Joe Small scored a career-high 40 points, many of them coming in the furious fourth-quarter, when the teams scored a combined 61 points. Buena Park (7-4) led by one point at the half and never gave up the lead. Bolsa Grande is 6-4.
Burbank 64, Magnolia 63--Chris Buck completed a three-point play with one second remaining as Burbank (9-4) came back from an eight-point deficit after three quarters and won the consolation championship.
Magnolia’s Mark Lyon, who finished with 27, missed two foul shots with 13 seconds remaining and the score tied, 61-61. Buck then was fouled as he hit an 18-footer from the baseline. Magnolia scored on an uncontested shot in the final second to cut the final margin to one. Abo Velasco led Burbank, scoring 12 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter. Mike Goff added 22 for Magnolia (8-3).