PACIFICA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Whitlock Hits for 40 Points to Lead Loara to Championship

Before the first quarter was half over, Loara High’s Tes Whitlock had scored all 12 of his team’s points to give the Saxons an early 12-6 lead over Pacifica in the championship game of the Pacifica Classic tournament Friday.

The junior guard did not stop--he drove, he stole, he hung on the rim and received a technical foul. He shot four three-pointers, went eight for 10 at the free-throw line and scored 40 points, 27 in the first half, to lead the Saxons (11-0) to a 70-65 victory over the Mariners (2-6).

“Believe me, it wasn’t intentional,” Loara coach Jerry Halpin said of Whitlock’s first half. “Nobody else looked like they wanted the ball. Thank goodness he played like the best player in Orange County in the first half, which he is.”

Pacifica came back to tie the score, 19-19, at the end of the first quarter, and then contained the Saxons enough to take a 43-37 lead going into the half.

But Loara woke up and started pressing hard in the second half, and Saxon junior Dan Wassink hit three three-pointers in the third quarter to give Loara a 58-57 lead at the start of the fourth quarter.

“(Wassink) killed us,” Pacifica coach Rhett Heckel said. “That really fired them up, got them right into it. We were sitting pretty at halftime, but then he got on track.

“We had been hoping Whitlock wouldn’t shoot so well,” Heckel said. Whitlock, the tournament’s most valuable player, tied the single-game tournament scoring record, and broke the record for most points scored in the tournament with 108 total points.

In other tournament games:

Dos Pueblos 58, Santa Margarita 44--Chris Gaines led the Chargers over Santa Margarita (3-5) with 26 points in the third-place game.

Westminster 68, Magnolia 43--Senior Eden Yawata scored 16 points, including four three-pointers, for the Lions in the consolation championship game.