Ventura Turns Back West L.A.

Granted, it was a win, but Ventura College’s 68-58 victory over visiting West Los Angeles in a Western State Conference inter-division basketball game Saturday night was not what Coach Philip Mathews was looking for.

Mathews, in his eighth season at Ventura, was hoping for a dominating victory to serve as a springboard into North Division play, which starts next week.

“Horrible,” Mathews said. “That was the worst exhibition of basketball I’ve ever seen from a (Ventura College) team. We didn’t rebound. We didn’t play hard. We just laid down for most of the game after the first five or six minutes.”

West L.A. (3-14) was a decided underdog against the No. 1-ranked team in the state, but the Oilers trailed only 33-26 at halftime, despite committing 14 turnovers.

They began the second half with a 10-2 run and held a 48-44 advantage with 11 minutes 10 seconds left.

“We did not do a good job of converting their turnovers into points in the first half,” Mathews said. “And they just beat us up and down the floor for most of the second half. . . . The only reason we won this game is because we had better athletes. If we had played this way against a top-20 team, we would have lost by 20 points.”

With the score tied, 52-52, Ventura (24-1) finally took control with an 8-0 run that ended with 3 1/2 minutes remaining.

Joey Ramirez (18 points) hit his fourth three-point shot of the game to start the run, Alfred Kennedy (seven points, five rebounds) followed with a 10-foot bank shot in the lane, and Stephane Brown (16 points, six assists) capped it with a three-point play.

“We played hard,” West L.A. Coach Charles Sands said. “But I think we just ran out of gas in the last 10 minutes.”

Despite tiring, the Oilers closed their deficit to 60-56 with 1:03 remaining and could have cut it to 60-59 had not Reece Stovall’s three-point shot been waved off because of traveling.

Stovall, the team’s leading scorer, did not play in the first half because of disciplinary reasons, but he scored 13 points in the second half.

Brandon Jessie and Michael King each scored 10 points for Ventura.

The Pirates, who will open North Division play at home against Cuesta on Wednesday, looked as though they might blow West L.A. out early, hitting five of their first seven shots to take a 15-4 lead with 15:02 left in the first half, but the Oilers scored the next six points and pulled to 23-20 with six minutes remaining.