Jared Brown of Cypress sets up a play Friday as San Clemente’s Max Rumph defends.
Cypress boys basketball held off a late charge by San Clemente to capture a 72-62 victory over the Tritons Friday night in the North-South Challenge at Tesoro.
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Jared Brown, the MVP of the game, led the Centurions (12-1) with 27 points while Anthony Tello had 20 points.
Anthony Smetona led San Clemente (5-8) with 20 points. Zeeshan Ishani added 16 points for Coach Marc Popovich’s team.
Cypress (12-1 overall) led by as many as 21 points in the first half and held a 40-24 lead halftime but San Clemente got back into the game outscoring the Centurions 18-13 in the third quarter.
“They’re length bothered us in the second half, we weren’t hitting out box outs,” said Cypress Coach Derek Mitchell. “I think we got to the big lead and then we let up a little bit in the second half. We were willing to gut it out in the end and we got some stops when we needed to so it turned out for the best for us.”
“Luckily at the end we got a couple of steals and were able to push the lead back up.”
San Clemente was able to cut the lead to five points with 1:22 remaining.
But Cypress restored order and finished the game on a dunk in the final seconds by Tello off a steal which accounted for the final margin.
“They scared us a little bit,” Brown said. “But before we came into the game, we knew we had to use our speed against them because they’re a big team and a very well coached team. We were up by 16 at half, and then their height slowed us down a little bit because we stopped getting defensive stops and we stopped with the intensity.
“But we knew once we got it back, we were fine.”
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