SOUTHERN SECTION BOYS’ BASKETBALL PLAYOFFS : DIVISION III-AA : Morningside Routs Santa Margarita, Then Crowd Gets Ugly

The substitutes were fighting for yet another loose ball late in the fourth quarter when Inglewood Morningside’s basketball fans declared their team’s dominance of the Southern Section III-AA playoffs.

Their chant: “CIF . . . CIF . . . CIF.”

Santa Margarita’s fans, whose team trailed by 25 points, had to respond academically rather than athletically: “SAT . . . SAT . . . SAT.”

Morningside shot back: “You can’t jump . . . You can’t jump . . . You can’t jump.”

The response of the Santa Margarita fans was even uglier. They had nothing better to do; there was nothing they could do about the scoreboard: Morningside 85, Santa Margarita 63.

Top-seeded and defending-champion Morningside earned its third consecutive trip to a section final by blowing out its third consecutive Orange County opponent in a semifinal Tuesday night at Capistrano Valley.

Stais Boseman scored 20 points and Dominic Ellison added 18 to lead Morningside (26-4), which will play South Torrance in the championship game at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Cal Poly Pomona.

The Monarchs beat Servite, 75-52, in the first round and Estancia, 80-50, in the quarterfinals.

And Santa Margarita didn’t fare much better Tuesday night.

Morningside’s strength and quickness were too much for the fourth-seeded Eagles (23-5), who suffered through a horrible night shooting.

Santa Margarita made only eight of 20 first-half shots, including two of five in the second quarter.

Morningside raced to a 38-20 halftime lead and led by as many as 27 in the third quarter.

Morningside dominated with a full-court press for most of the game. Although Santa Margarita point guard Adam Dzierzynski did a good job breaking the press, the Eagles missed several easy shots, including six first-quarter layups.

“They’re a very athletic team,” Santa Margarita Coach Jerry DeBusk said of Morningside. “They were everything we saw in the scouting report.”

They couldn’t keep them off the rim, either.

Morningside put on a fine dunking show with six jams, including two by Boseman, a 6-foot-4 forward who’s headed to USC. His second dunk was worthy of an NBA highlight reel.

With Morningside leading, 52-31, late in the third quarter, Boseman took a pass on the left side of the fast break and took off about 10 feet from the basket. He soared above the rim and threw down a one-handed tomahawk dunk that would have made Dominique Wilkins jealous.

The dunk went down, but so did Boseman. He was shoved on the play by Santa Margarita’s Bryan Young and left the game briefly after lying on the court for a few minutes.

“It was a hard foul,” Morningside Coach Carl Franklin said. “He bumped his head a little bit. With Stais, you don’t know how much of that was show.”

Santa Margarita’s Brad Finneran tried covering Boseman man-to-man early, but picked up his third foul late in the first quarter. Kevin Lewis led the Eagles with 13 points, and Dzierzynski added 11.