Simi Valley Stunned by Thousand Oaks

Thousand Oaks High, coming off a season in which it set a school record for wins and won its first Marmonte League boys’ basketball title since 1977, again was expected to contend this season.

But in winning just five of their 10 preseason games, the Lancers appeared to be headed for somewhere near the middle of the pack.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the league season. Thousand Oaks patched its holes, then showed off the results with consecutive league wins this week.

The Lancers (7-5, 2-0 in league play) first tagged Royal with a 31-point loss Monday, then handed highly regarded Simi Valley a 66-62 defeat Wednesday at Thousand Oaks.

“We struggled in the preseason, but we had to get some pieces put together,” Thousand Oaks Coach Ed Chevalier said. “We played a lot of people to see what they could do.”

Apparently, they’ll do.

Simi Valley entered the game with a 10-2 record and Monday handed Agoura, which also is expected to contend for the league title, a 24-point loss. But the Pioneers led only twice against Thousand Oaks.

Simi Valley (10-3, 1-1) still managed to jump on the shoulders of senior forward Danny Alexander, who scored 22 of his game-high 28 points in the second half and hit three free throws that tied the score, 58-58, with 3 minutes remaining. He added two free throws to give Simi Valley its first lead since the opening basket, 62-60, with 1:34 left.

Thousand Oaks junior forward Paul Foster (12 points) answered with his second consecutive basket to tie the score with 1:25 remaining. With 56 seconds left, Alexander looked for teammate Gordon Stolla on a back-door play that was successful several times for the Pioneers, but his pass was deflected and stolen.

That set up Shane Graham for a short jump shot that gave Thousand Oaks a 64-62 lead with 41 seconds to play. With Alexander double-teamed, Simi Valley’s Nathan Simmons missed a 10-foot jump shot with 10 seconds left and Thousand Oaks’ Jeff Perrault hit both ends of a one-and-one with eight seconds to play.

Senior Andrew Borg scored 18 points to lead Thousand Oaks, which finished 24 of 40 (60%) from the field and made six of seven three-point shots.