Tustin’s Inability to Follow Coach’s Plan Proves Costly : Division II-AA: Failure to play as a team in second half thwarts Tillers’ comeback attempt. Inglewood advances, 62-54.

The Tustin Tillers needed to be flawless Tuesday night. Anything short of absolute perfection would bring a loss, and Coach Andy Ground drilled that fact into his players’ minds.

By halftime, Tustin was within seven points of Inglewood, which meant the Tillers were following Ground’s instructions as closely as they could.

But when the second half started, Tustin went free-lancing and lost to the Sentinels, 62-54, in the second round of the Division II-AA boys’ basketball playoffs at Tustin.

Inglewood, backed by Givon Hester’s team-leading 19 points, advanced to the quarterfinals on Friday night. The unseeded Sentinels (18-9) will play fourth-seeded San Bernardino Cajon, a 59-58 winner over Riverside Poly Tuesday.

Tustin (15-8) ended its season in frustrating fashion. And Ground explained the reasons in no uncertain terms.

“I thought the kids didn’t follow the game plan,” he said. “They played not as a team but as individuals, and they got drilled.”

Trailing, 30-23, at halftime, Tustin promptly stopped doing all the things that had kept it in the game in the first place. The Tillers’ shot selection and rebounding went south immediately and they began to lose their patience and their poise soon after.

“Dejuan (Matthews) and Jason Reynolds played their little two-man game,” Ground said. “They don’t follow the game plan and that (a defeat) is exactly what’s going to happen.”

Inglewood, meanwhile, only got stronger and more patient, pushing the lead to 40-28 after Paul Pierce rebounded a miss by Abdul Benjamin and dunked.

Ground, by now disgusted with his starters, went with his reserves for much of the third and fourth quarters.

And Inglewood’s lead kept growing and growing.

Two free throws pushed the Sentinels’ advantage to 50-34 with 5:02 left in the game. Later, they led by as many as 17 points and Tustin was left to ponder what might have been.

After playing so well for the first half, the second half seemed a bitter pill to swallow. Matthews, who had scored 15 points and made six of eight shots from the field in the first half, had only five points after intermission. But he was the only Tiller to score in double figures.

Reynolds and reserve Greg Logan each had nine points.

Tustin tightened things up only in the final minutes, when it was clear Inglewood had lost its intensity.

“Down the stretch our people couldn’t hold the lead and we had to put the starters back in,” Inglewood Coach Patrick Roy said.

Tustin closed to within 58-51 with 25 seconds left and Roy benched the subs in favor of the more-disciplined play of his starters. They were able to keep the Tillers from getting any closer in the final seconds.

“Tustin shot the ball really, really well,” Roy said. “Much better than in the game we scouted them. They buried it.”

So at halftime, he asked the Sentinels to turn up their defensive pressure.

“Defensively, we had to rattle them a little bit,” he said. “In the third quarter, we put the pressure on them and kept it on them. And we rebounded.”

Inglewood snatched everything in sight in the third quarter, which further added to Tustin’s demise.

That fact was not lost on Ground.

“We didn’t box out,” he said. “You can’t do that against better athletes. You can’t expect to win if you don’t rebound.”