Taft’s Runs Keep Skein Alive, 77-70

Hot streak shooters. Uncontested runs. And turnovers.

Taft High had plenty of all three Wednesday in a 77-70 victory over Cleveland and claimed sole possession of first place in the West Valley League at Taft.

The Toreadors overcame 27 turnovers--two more than Cleveland--with solid shooting and the Big Three: Steve Smith, Ronald Gray and Gregg Guenther.

They combined for 65 points, 84% of Taft’s offense.

“We’ve been hyped up all week for this [game],” said Smith, a 14-year-old freshman who scored 24 points.

The Toreadors (15-1, 5-0 in league play), winners of 15 in a row, relied on streaks and runs in every quarter to keep the Cavaliers at bay.

“We knew it would be a game of runs and we were lucky to get it started with an 11-0 lead,” Taft Coach Mark Drucker said.

That burst in the first four minutes of the game was one of five significant runs for the Toreadors, who trailed for just over a minute in the second quarter.

Taft put together another 11-0 run in the second quarter to take a 32-24 lead. The Toreadors also enjoyed a 13-0 run in the third quarter, a 10-0 run that started in the third and ended in the fourth. Minutes later, a 9-0 run that gave the Toreadors their largest lead, 66-47, with less than four minutes to play.

But Taft wasn’t the only team scoring unanswered points.

Cleveland (13-7, 4-1), which had a 14-game league winning streak snapped, ripped off runs of 10-0, 13-0 and 8-0.

Yet the most fantastic streaks were the single-quarter scoring displays by Gray and Smith. Gray, who finished with 24 points, scored 12 of Taft’s 13 points in the first quarter; Smith scored 15 of the Toreadors’ 19 points in the second quarter.

“I had such a terrible first quarter . . . and I wanted to help my team out by scoring [in the second quarter],” said Smith, who was six of eight in the second quarter.

Taft maintained the upper hand with solid shooting, especially from the free-throw line, where the Toreadors made 26 of 32 (81%).

Guenther, a 6-foot-8 senior center who finished with 17 points, was nine of 10 from the line. Gray was eight of 10, including four of four technical foul shots.

Cleveland, which was nine of 28 from three-point range, did cave in. The Cavaliers whittled a 16-point deficit to three in the third quarter and a 19-point deficit to five in the fourth quarter.

Trailing, 66-47, Cleveland cut Taft’s lead to 75-70 in three minutes. A follow shot by Justin Thompson with 12 seconds left was Cleveland’s last basket.

“We came out flat in the first half and then in the second half we let the [referees] get to us,” said Cleveland’s Anthony Davis, who had 10 of his 11 points in the fourth quarter.

All nine players who played for Cleveland scored. Grant Pledger and David Franklin each had 10 points. Quenton Harvey, who is averaging 16.2 points in league games, was limited to six points on three pointers in the first and third quarters.

“I thought James Smith did a great job on Harvey,” Drucker said. “That was definitely somebody we thought we had to stop.”