Mater Dei Starts Slowly, Then Finishes Off Bonita Vista

Maybe next time Mater Dei should skip the pregame meal.

Weighed down by pasta and surprised by the intensity of Chula Vista Bonita Vista’s players and its crowd, Mater Dei fell behind by nine before the game was three minutes old.

But the Monarchs regrouped, blew the game open with a 14-0 run to open the third quarter and eventually wore down an undermanned Bonita Vista team--winning, 79-53, in front of about 3,000 Tuesday night at Eastlake High in the first round of the Division I Southern California boys’ basketball playoffs.

“They did a very good job of what they do, running the floor,” Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight said. “We came out and said, ‘We’re Mater Dei.’ They’re running by us, jumping over us, catching us flat-footed. We stopped at the Olive Garden in Carlsbad. Maybe we were still digesting the fettuccine Alfredo.”

And maybe Bonita Vista was playing on adrenaline and heart to make up for the absence of its best inside player, Lamar Robson, who was in bed with a 103-degree fever.

“We sucked it up for a half, but we couldn’t sustain two halves without Lamar,” Bonita Vista point guard Victor Esquer said. “I think it would have been a different game with Lamar.”

McKnight didn’t disagree.

“Let’s give them a lot of credit for playing without Lamar,” McKnight said. “I saw him on film and he’s as tough a kid as I’ve seen. He must have been pretty sick not to be here.”

Without Robson, Mater Dei (32-3) dominated the boards, outrebounding Bonita Vista, 46-27. Still, Bonita Vista (30-5) led, 11-2, and trailed only 35-34 at halftime.

But third quarter started with an alley-oop dunk by Jamal Sampson off a perfect feed from Imram Sufi and Derrick Mansell sank a three-pointer after Bonita Vista turned the ball over. After that, Steve Scoggin put the game away. Scoggin hit four-three pointers, breaking out of a shooting slump.

“I couldn’t hit a three to save my life since the playoffs began,” said Scoggin, whose game-high 15 points came on five three-pointers. “That’s the best we’ve played offensively in a long time.”

But Scoggin was critical of the defense. “We came out tight,” he said. “In the second half, we started to play and we took the crowd out of the game.”

One of the biggest positives for Mater Dei was the play of Sampson, who started for only the fourth time this season. He scored 11 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and blocked two shots. Sampson, a 6-10 center, is recovering from a broken hand, broken foot and broken finger.