Negrete Could Boost SCC’s Fortunes
With conference play heating up, the Southern California College men’s basketball team could get a boost from transfer Phil Negrete, a 6-foot-5 guard from Gardena. He played as a freshman at UC Irvine last season but has enrolled at SCC and begun workouts with the team, SCC Coach Bill Reynolds said.
“He’s very athletic,” Reynolds said, “but I’ve never had a mid-season transfer step in and play right away. They usually redshirt. But if he proves he’s ready, he’ll play.”
Negrete played one minute in Friday’s 130-112 victory over California Christian, scoring three points.
SCC opened conference play Tuesday against Azusa Pacific and lost to the NAIA’s seventh-ranked team, 75-62.
Senior Terence Wilborn returned to the lineup Tuesday after sitting out the previous three games while the school looked into a possible student code violation, Reynolds said.
Although Wilborn struggled after the layoff, making only two of 12 from the field, he still grabbed 13 rebounds and gave SCC some bulk it lacked when losing two of the three games Wilborn missed.
SCC plays another conference game tonight at ninth-ranked Biola.
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Hoop schedule: Concordia will host Azusa Pacific in a doubleheader today, beginning with the women’s game at 5:30 p.m. The men’s game is at 7:30 p.m. The Azusa Pacific men were ranked seventh and the women 25th in the NAIA this week.
The Chapman women have two key games coming up, playing at UC San Diego today before returning home to play Pomona-Pitzer Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Chapman (12-4) lost to Pomona-Pitzer, 71-61, Jan. 9.
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Player of the week: SCC senior Elaine Whittemore was named the Golden State Athletic Conference player of the week last week. She averaged 18 points and 10 rebounds, shooting 64% from the field to help the Vanguards post two victories.
Whittemore is 10th in the nation in field-goal percentage, making 102 of 174 shots (58.6%) through 16 games.
Teammate Amee Pina leads the conference in assists at 7.2 per game, good enough for fourth in the nation.
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Women’s basketball: SCC has moved up with the elite teams in the nation, at least statistically.
The Vanguards are ranked second in the NAIA in three-point field-goal percentage, making 108 of 256 (42.2%). SCC is also ranked in the top 10 in scoring offense (fourth, 83.3 points per game), scoring defense (fourth, 53.4), field-goal percentage (sixth, 48.9%) and free-throw percentage (ninth, 71.4%).
Those numbers must mean something. Unranked SCC knocked off 25th-ranked Azusa Pacific, 61-47, in a GSAC opener Tuesday.