Soviets Beat SoCal Preps at Their Own Game, 102-80

The best high school basketball players Southern California, and in a couple of cases, the country had to offer did more than take it on the chin Sunday night. They took it in the heart, too.

Yes, the game was against the touring Soviet Junior National team, a group that has been together for several months, which doesn’t make a 102-80 drubbing before a crowd of approximately 2,000 at Cerritos College all that bad for the locals. But, still . . . .

Sean Higgins of Fairfax hit 6 of 18 shots from the floor. LeRon Ellis of Santa Ana Mater Dei, the Southern Section 5-A Player of the Year, was 0 for 6. Ronnie Coleman of Compton Dominguez, took only one shot. Kevin Franklin, the City scoring champion from Woodland Hills Taft made 1 of 7 field goals.

“We couldn’t play offense, we couldn’t play defense,” co-coach Gerry Freitas said. “We couldn’t stop their break, we couldn’t run ours. There’s not a lot we did well.

“We went into the game knowing the things we had to do, and we just didn’t do it.”

Added Coleman, an All-Southern Section selection: “We were ready. Things just didn’t go right.”

Such as?

“You saw the game,” Coleman said. “I don’t really want to talk about it now.”

The locals didn’t have much at all to talk about after the first 13 minutes, when the Soviets built a 37-20 lead.

It was 45-34 at the end of the first of two 20-minute halves played with international rules, before the all-stars pulled within eight with 17 minutes left in the game. But 2:01 later, the Soviets pushed the lead back to 62-43 and were in complete control the rest of the way.

Georgy Restzov, one of three 6-10 players on the Soviet team, gave the game a fitting end at the buzzer: A slam dunk.

Oleg Meletshenko, a very impressive guard, led the way with 26 points, while 6-10 Dmitry Minaev added 16, 6-10 Igor Pinchuk had 13 and 6-4 guard Sergy Babkov 10. Higgins led the Southern California team with 19 and Jason Matthews of Santa Monica St. Monica had 11.

“They had plenty of mistakes on the defensive line, maybe because they never met the kind of play our team has,” Soviet Coach Vladimir Obukhov said.