Antelope Valley College Celebrates Coach’s Birthday by Routing Citrus

Some days are just a little jinxed. The Ides of March didn’t treat Caesar too well, Oct. 31 is always a little tricky, and any Friday the 13th is worrisome.

Well, a warning to future opponents of a Newton Chelette-coached basketball team: Don’t schedule a game on Jan. 31.

The Antelope Valley College men celebrated their coach’s 40th birthday by beating Citrus College by 40something and then some, 121-65, Wednesday night at Antelope Valley.

Antelope Valley avenged its only conference loss, a 64-60 slowdown setback at Citrus, and stretched its conference lead to two games.

Citrus came to Antelope Valley with the stingiest defense in the Foothill Conference and held the high-scoring Marauders to 62 points--in the first half.

“That’s got to be as good a half as we played all year, and it’s all due to our intensity on defense,” Chelette said.

Citrus suffered a key loss before the game when second-leading scorer Paris Canty injured a knee during warm-ups.

Canty’s teammates fell behind by 21 points less than 10 minutes into the game, and the situation went from bad to worse for Citrus when its leading scorer and rebounder, Bryant Carter, twisted an ankle early in the second half.

“I don’t think it was X’s and O’s. We just got very deflated,” Citrus Coach Neil Edwards said of his team after Canty’s injury. “It took three timeouts to remind them there was a season to be played. We got caught short-handed against a very good team.”

Antelope Valley made 14 of 29 three-point attempts and shot 56% from the field. Tony Madison led Antelope Valley with 19 points.

Antelope Valley’s Demetrious Phillips came off the bench to score 18 points and Walter Brooks made six of eight shots in scoring 18.

Joe Mantashigian (16), Steve Walker (15) and Paul Ernst (11) were Antelope Valley’s other double-figure scorers.

What drama there was in the game was provided by Antelope Valley point guard Dedan Thomas, who underwent knee surgery Jan. 11 and entered the game with 7 minutes 9 seconds remaining in the first half, his first action since the operation.

Playing with his left leg heavily wrapped, Thomas handed out eight assists and scored two points in slightly more than 12 minutes.