ROUNDUP : Crespi Prevails Despite Slowdown Tactics

More than one team will try to do to Crespi High what Glendale did Thursday night in a consolation quarterfinal game of the 49th Beverly Hills Invitational basketball tournament.

And that is why first-year Coach Chris Nikchevich is going to have to run up his phone bill a little. Sure, he’ll take the 65-62 win over Glendale, he just rather would have some advice from an old buddy for the next time.

“I’m going to have to call Westhead on this one,” Nikchevich said. “The same thing happened to him in the Alabama game in the (1990 NCAA) tournament.”

What happened to Westhead then happened to Crespi on Thursday: A team played a deliberate, patient, passing-game offense in the face of Crespi’s let’s-run-all-night-and-break-the-score-board offense that Nikchevich borrowed from his former coach at Loyola Marymount, Paul Westhead, the current coach of the Denver Nuggets.

Glendale (2-4), a taller and slower team than Crespi (4-2), held the Celts to just eight first-quarter points--an uncommonly low total for the high-scoring Celts--by dictating the pace early.

It was not until the second quarter when Crespi was able to play the kind of game that Nikchevich is coaching: advantageous, risky basketball designed to encourage a rapid pace and keep scorekeepers busy.

Oh, the Celts came around all right. Senior forward Rasaan Hall scored 16 of his team-high 26 points in the second and third quarters when Crespi outscored Glendale, 48-34, to take a 12-point lead late in the third quarter.

But just as surely, a frisky Glendale team fought back. Jason Harper, a 6-foot-6 senior center, scored 10 of his game-high 28 points in the final period as Glendale tied the score, 57-57, with 5 minutes 40 seconds left.

It was up to Crespi, which scored all nine of its fourth-quarter points from the free-throw line, to respond under pressure. Fittingly, Hall made four of four free throws with less than a minute to play.

Conversely, Glendale made just eight of 22 free throws.

Nikchevich, then, was understandably economical about his feelings.

“The bottom line is, we won,” he said. “If we win ugly, then we win ugly.”