Brazen Palmdale Batters Hart With Third-Quarter Surge : High school basketball: Confident Falcons knock off No. 1-ranked Indians, who turn cold in the second half, 65-49.

Members of the Palmdale High basketball team strolled into The Master’s College gym Saturday night with a confident, almost cocky look about them.

And the Falcons backed it up, beating favored Hart, 65-49, in the second round of the Southern Section Division I-A playoffs in front of a more than 1,100.

The game was played at The Master’s because Hart’s gym sustained severe earthquake damage.

Hart, the Foothill League champion and No. 1-ranked team in the Times’ Valley poll, finishes 21-2. Palmdale, the Golden League champion and No. 3-ranked team, improved to 23-3 with its 15th consecutive victory.

Earlier in the season the Falcons lost to Hart by three points in the final seconds. Palmdale will make its first ever appearance in the quarterfinals Tuesday night against Buena at a site to be determined.

“Our kids were really up for this game,” Palmdale Coach Garry Phelps said. “From the start of the season they’ve been very confident. They said, ‘Coach we’re going to go 15-0 in league,’ and we did. Then, they had us beating Hart in the bracket.”

Palmdale trailed throughout the first quarter and most of the second. The Falcons tied the score, 25-25, when Al Lairson hit an 18-foot jumper from the left baseline with 1:58 left in the half. The score remained the same at the break.

Lairson, a 6-foot-4 senior, scored 23 points, 13 in the first half.

The Falcons came out firing in the second half. They outscored Hart, 13-2, in the opening minutes and took a 38-27 lead when Lairson hit a short jumper.

The Indians went scoreless during a four-minute span in the third quarter and their shooting didn’t improve in the fourth.

“It comes down to something that’s pretty simple: We didn’t shoot the ball well,” Hart Coach Mike May said.

Palmdale guard Jerome Payton was unstoppable in the second half. When senior Maurice Wright fouled out with 6:42 left in the third quarter, Payton picked up the slack, scoring 12 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter.

“I had to step up my game and help my team out,” Payton said. “Then I was open for all those layups and I just took over.”

Brian Ballew, Ronnie Valenzuela and Cody Patterson fouled out for Hart, which got 12 points from Randy Roa.