Laguna Beach No Match for Santa Clara

Seldom as a team traveled so far and played so poorly in such a big game as the Laguna Beach High School boys’ basketball team did Thursday night in the semifinals of the Southern California Division IV regional playoffs.

After a 140-mile trip to Ventura College, Laguna Beach never got untracked and lost to defending state champion Santa Clara, 77-48, in front of a capacity crowd of 2,200.

It was hard to believe that Laguna Beach once led, 6-2, in a game that was never close after the opening two minutes of the second quarter. Laguna Beach (23-7) went 11 minutes 30 seconds from the end of the first quarter until the opening minutes of the third quarter without scoring a field goal and fell behind, 38-12.

Guard Shon Tarver scored Santa Clara’s first 12 points to quickly erase Laguna Beach’s lead and then put on a show, scoring 39 points on a variety of drives, dunks and three-point shots.

Tarver, who has narrowed his college choices to Notre Dame, Nevada-Las Vegas, UCLA, Syracuse and Georgia Tech, made 15 of 24 shots and was five of eight at the free-throw line. Tarver’s final basket was his most spectacular, a towering dunk off an alley-oop pass before he left the game with 4:19 remaining.

“He was a man playing with boys tonight,” said Ed Bowen, Laguna Beach coach. “He’s just waiting to see where he wants to go, he can write his own ticket. On this level, he plays equally well inside or outside.”

Which is more than one could say for Laguna Beach Thursday night. The Artists made two of 26 shots in the first half and seemed to tighten up with every miss. Laguna Beach missed every shot in the second quarter and had only five free throws to show for eight minutes of play.

“I don’t ever remember a dry spell that lasted that long,” Bowen said. “I’d like to say that we were shooting good shots and missing, but we weren’t. We were taking bad, off-balanced shots. It was very frustrating.”

Santa Clara, which hasn’t lost a game since losing to Edison in the Estancia tournament in December of 1988, won its 32nd in a row. “We played probably the best defense I’ve seen in high school basketball in a long, long time,” Coach Lou Cvijanovich said. “He took them completely out of their game. We pressured the heck out of them.”

Santa Clara (26-0) advances to the regional final at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at Cal State Dominguez Hills for the second consecutive year.

Forward Brady Butcher was the only player to score in double figures for Laguna Beach, getting 11 points in the third quarter to finish with 13. Center Dain Blanton, the team’s leading scorer, was held to eight points and had six rebounds.