Crawford’s Streak Boosts Moorpark

During the late portion of Moorpark College’s basketball game Thursday night, Sam Crawford turned his opponents into pawns and Glendale found itself checkmated.

A relatively inexperienced Glendale team once again had difficulties down the stretch, and Crawford scored a game-high 25 points to lead Moorpark to an 89-78 victory in a Western State Conference interdivision game at Glendale.

Moorpark, ranked sixth in the state, trailed, 52-51, with less than 14 minutes remaining, but Crawford scored nine consecutive points, then fed Aaron Smith for an alley-oop layup to make pull the Raiders ahead, 63-57.

Glendale (6-10) had one more surge, closing the gap to 71-68 with a little more than seven minutes remaining, but Moorpark streaked away with an 11-2 run. Moorpark led by 16 before Glendale scored the final five points of the game.

“At crucial times, we got the big basket,” Crawford said.

The 11-point margin was Glendale’s worst defeat of the season and marked its seventh loss in eight games.

The spate of close losses has left Coach Brian Beauchemin wondering if he needs to go back to square one. “I thought we played pretty well,” he said. “We’re getting maximums out of a lot of guys, maybe we’re not that talented.”

While Glendale came up short of pulling off the upset, Moorpark (16-2) played just well enough to win.

Leading scorer Damian Wilson banged up a hand in the first half and finished with only six points on three-of-11 shooting. Crawford, who also has an injured hand, made only eight of 24 shots.

“We played up and down and didn’t have a great game,” Moorpark Coach Al Nordquist said.

Smith made six of seven second-half shots and supported Crawford with 14 points. Sean Doyle, Nate Hantgin and Jimmy Galbert scored 12, 11 and 10, respectively.

Kelly Crosby made all 10 of his free throws and led Glendale with 19 points. Teammate Chris Cooke had 16 points and 14 rebounds.