Coach Lashes Out, Estancia Rips Tulare Western

Moments before halftime, Estancia High School Coach Tim O’Brien was screaming at his players in a way he seldom has--or has needed to--before.

Estancia, playing against Tulare Western in a first-round match of the Southern California Regional playoffs Tuesday night, wasn’t doing any one thing terribly wrong but its overall effort was too lackadaisical for O’Brien’s tastes.

But with a stellar third-quarter performance, Estancia quickly made up for its mistakes and won a 90-61 blowout at Estancia High School.

The victory earned top-seeded Estancia (21-9) a Thursday night semifinal date with Dos Pueblos. Dos Pueblos advanced with a 72-46 rout of San Diego University.

Estancia had a 43-37 lead at halftime, but the Eagles had missed several opportunities to extend that lead significantly in the first half. O’Brien said it probably had to do with his team’s comedown after winning the Southern Section 3-AA championship last week.

“It was just a lack of concentration and mental toughness,” O’Brien said. “I think we’re just a bunch of fat cats, these guys, winning CIF (Southern Section). . . .

“CIF is a tremendous award. When kids talk about high school basketball, they say CIF. We’ve climbed that mountain. The kids celebrated, the coach celebrated. Hopefully today we realized we have to get back to work--if we do, there’s more we can celebrate down the road.”

In the third quarter, Estancia outscored Western, 22-8, holding Western scoreless for nearly six minutes by going to a match-up zone to prevent the losers from being effective inside.

After Western’s Rayland Elzy scored two consecutive baskets to cut Estancia’s lead to 49-43, Estancia went on a 16-point run. Western did not score again until LeRohn Dodson made two free throws with nine seconds remaining, and Estancia took a 65-45 lead into the fourth quarter.

The Eagles’ clutch player, senior guard Agustin Heredia, came through again, scoring a game-high 23 points and making 11 of 12 free throws. Estancia made 34 of 40 for the game. Western made 14 of 25.

Matt Fuerbringer added 17 points for Estancia. Dodson scored 18 points to lead Western (12-13).

“We just got cold,” Western Coach Mark Siverly said. “We had 70 shots total. That’s how many we usually take, but we got cold. We had to start going for steals and stuff we don’t usually do. We had to make some baskets and we didn’t. We took some bad shots instead.”

Said O’Brien: “They put it to us early. (But in the second half) we went to that zone. They were really beating us up in the lane. We had to pack them in there.

“We just played with more intensity in the second half. And that home court edge is nice too. There was a lot of red out there tonight.”