Reserve Power Propels Mater Dei Into Final

Mater Dei played exceptional defense Tuesday night, and had little problem advancing to its eighth Southern Section boys’ basketball championship game of the decade.

But one wonders whether Simi Valley left something behind on the long commute to UC Irvine.

Tentative during warm-ups, the Pioneers were even tighter in the opening quarter at the Bren Center, hitting only four of their first 14 shots, and turning the ball over five times on the way to a 56-43 loss to the second-seeded Monarchs in Division I-A.

Mater Dei (30-3) will play Glendora at the Arrowhead Pond Saturday. Simi Valley finished 28-3.

For the second consecutive game, the Monarchs were without two key players, and once again the reserves stepped in and provided the spark.

Guard Imran Sufi, making his second straight start, finished with 12 points and three assists. A three-point basket, the second of the game for the light-shooting guard, with 2:05 left before halftime gave the Monarchs a 28-17 lead.

Mater Dei was playing without injured 6-foot-9 center Jamal Sampson, who figured to go head-to-head with Simi Valley’s 6-9 Dustin Villepique. Swingman Cedric Bozeman was out with a knee injury.

So Monarch Coach Gary McKnight started 6-9 Eric Soderberg in Sampson’s spot and Soderberg was one reason why Simi Valley’s Rafael Berumen was two for eight from the field with four points in the first half.

Simi Valley made only eight of 28 shots from the field in the first half and had 12 turnovers.

Sufi said he and his teammates could sense early on that something wasn’t right with the Pioneers.

“I think we played really hard defense in the first five minutes,” he said. “We knew that Simi Valley had never trailed at the end of the first quarter this year and the fact that we got up on them was a key. When we made our run in the second quarter it took them out of the game.”

The crowd got into the game only once. That came with 4:46 to go in the game, when a three-point play by Berumen cut the Monarch lead to seven, 44-37.

But Mater Dei went on a 10-4 run over the next two minutes and that was that.

“We’ve played a lot of big games, but we came out flat tonight,” said Simi Valley forward Brett Michel, who scored 10 points.

Mater Dei’s defensive pressure had a lot to do with that, McKnight said.

“I don’t think they’ve seen that kind of defense,” McKnight said.