Tornadoes can’t cool down Spartans

TEMPLE CITY — With their respective leagues scheduled to begin play next week, the Hoover High and La Cañada boys’ basketball teams met Friday night for a final tuneup.

At stake was seventh place in the La Salle/Temple City Holiday Classic Tournament. Thanks to some clutch shooting from Darrell Dansby, La Cañada came through with a convincing win.

Dansby finished with 21 points and teammate Jay Srinivasan added 20 to power La Cañada to a 65-33 victory at Temple City High.

Dansby and Srinivasan combined for nine three-pointers to help the Spartans, who captured the CIF Southern Section Division III-AA championship last season, improve to 7-6. Srinivasan made six three-pointers and Dansby added three against Hoover, which lost its third game in a row after winning its previous five to fall to 6-7.

“We came into the game shooting around 25% on our three-pointers,” La Cañada Coach Tom Hofman said. “It was nice to get it going again and defensively we’ve been good.

“Darrell had struggled lately and he came in relaxed and made some threes.”

Dansby made his second three-pointer to give the Spartans a 28-14 lead with 2:33 left in the second quarter.

“I had a good warmup before the game, and I wanted to get us a quick lead,” Dansby said. “We came out with an aggressive mentality and we wanted to put them away quick.

“This will hopefully get us going [into Rio Hondo League]. We want to build off this.”

Hoover, which will start Pacific League competition Tuesday, had no answer in stopping La Cañada’s hot shooting.

The result left Hoover Coach Jack Van Patten, whose team trailed, 28-17, at halftime, disappointed.

“They were the better team and it’s not the way I’d like it to be,” said Van Patten, who got 10 points from Kyle Bernardo. “We got away from what we wanted to do, which was getting in front of people defensively.

“We were out of position.”

Srinivasan had four three-pointers in the second half.