Orange County : 4-A PREP BASKETBALL PLAYOFFS : Santa Ana Sweats Out Win Over Dominguez

Santa Ana High School’s basketball coach, Greg Coombs, had to sweat out the final three seconds of his team’s first-round game in the Southern Section 4-A boys’ basketball playoffs Friday night.

And it amounted to nearly 10 minutes of sweating.

When it was over and Santa Ana had held on for a 54-52 victory over Dominguez at Santa Ana, Coombs let out an outburst of repetition.

“Weird, weird, weird,” said Coombs, who then let out a sigh of relief.

Santa Ana (24-3), which trailed by three after three quarters, had forged a 53-50 lead with seven seconds left behind the play of Bobby Joyce, who finished with 20 points despite being in foul trouble most of the game.

Then the trouble started.

Dominguez’s Xavier Edison drove toward the basket but was stripped of the ball by Joyce. However, Santa Ana’s Oscar Wilson was fouled while in the process of tipping the ball back to Joyce.

However, Joyce did not hear the whistle and dunked the ball and appeared to hang on the rim with three seconds left.

Joyce was called for a technical foul.

“I never thought about anything else. It was just a perfect dunk,” Joyce said.

Officials first reversed themselves, saying that Joyce didn’t hear the whistle, thus negating the technical foul call. But after a heated discussion with Dominguez Coach Russell Otis, they reversed the call again, and the Dons were award two technical foul shots.

After Wilson made one of two free throws to give Santa Ana a 54-50 lead, Dominguez’s Steve Logan made the two technical foul shots to cut the deficit to two.

Dominguez (14-11) then inbounded the ball to DiJon Bernard, who had a game-high 22 points, in the corner. However, Bernard’s three-point field goal attempt bounced off the front of the rim as the buzzer sounded.