GARDEN GROVE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Loara Overcomes Panic to Beat Magnolia

Loara High School hasn’t played in the finals of a boys’ basketball tournament in more than two decades, so Saxon Coach Jerry Halpin wasn’t too worried when his team panicked in the third quarter Friday night.

But the Saxons survived a third-quarter rally by Magnolia High School and escaped with a 69-52 victory in the championship game of the Garden Grove Tournament. It was their first tournament title since the mid-1960s, Halpin said.

Loara nearly let the game slip away after building a 37-18 lead with 5:04 left in the third quarter.

Magnolia trimmed the deficit to 54-44 with 4:17 left in the fourth period, but Tes Whitlock and Kareem Collins each scored four points in a 15-8 streak that sealed the victory.

“We fell apart,” said Loara center Joey Gaudio, who finished with 17 points. “We thought we had it won in the third quarter and we let up.”

Still, Halpin wasn’t too worried.

“I think our semifinal game with Western on Wednesday night took a lot out of us,” Halpin said. “But we’ve got this team playing hard and believing in themselves. And in high school sports, believing in yourself goes a lot further than talent.”

Magnolia Coach Al Walin said his team never should have given Loara the big lead. The Sentinels sank only five of their first 15 free-throws and had 14 turnovers.

“We had such a lousy start that we couldn’t get organized,” Walin said. “The loss was our own fault. We didn’t do things we wanted to do.”

One of those things was stopping Whitlock, who finished with a game-high 18 points and was named the tournament’s most valuable player. He had eight points in the fourth quarter, when the Saxons pulled away.

“Tes knows when to rest and when to turn it on,” Halpin said.

Robbie Hargis scored 13 points for Magnolia (3-2).

The Saxons improved to 4-0 under Halpin, their first-year coach. They won only four games all last season.

“I’m really not surprised to be 4-0,” Halpin said. “We were 12-6 during the summer leagues, but I don’t think it really sank in how good this team was until we rallied from 19 down against Western in the semifinals.”

It sank in a little further on Friday night.

In consolation games of the Garden Grove tournament:

Western 68, Buena Park 45--Sam Sabbara scored 35 points to lead the Pioneers in the third-place game. Richard Harvey led Buena Park with 12.

Estancia 55, Laguna Hills 50--Augustin Heredia scored 19 points and Son Ly added 12 to lead the Eagles in the fifth-place game.

Garden Grove 52, Bolsa Grande 51--Joe Aguirre’s tip-in at the buzzer gave the Argonauts (1-2) the victory in the seventh-place game. Mark Perry led Garden Grove with 16 points and Aguirre added seven. Sherman Gorden led Bolsa Grande (1-3) with 13 points.