Sunny Hills holds on to defeat Beckman 64-59 and advance to finals of Century Elks Tournament

Luke Hosozawa of Sunny Hills is pressured by Aaman Soma of Beckman Friday night in the Century Elks Tournament.

Sunny Hills boys basketball team held off a late charge by Beckman to capture a 64-59 victory over the Patriots Friday night in the semifinals of the Century Elks Tournament.

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The Lancers (12-7) will face Newport Harbor Saturday in the title game at Century at 7:30 p.m.

Luke Hosozawa led Sunny Hills with 32 points. Wilson Cal added 11 points for Sunny Hills.

Beckman (12-5) was led by Dylan Thoerner with 25 points, Christopher Muller with 14 points and Aaman Soma with 11 points.

“They’re really good; we’ve watched them pretty much all year,” said Sunny Hills Coach Joe Ok. “They were in our tournament at the beginning of the year. We knew it was going to be a tough task.

“I think everything starts with Dylan Thoerner for them and we were really going to try and crowd him and pressure him and try different guys on him and I think our guys did a great job, especially Wilson Cal did a good job defending him and we just recognized they have good shooters and they have good shooters who can finish in the post.

“I think it was just a combination of guys just stepping up and knowing who they were guarding tonight and knowing their assignments. And it helps that we made some shots tonight.”

Sunny Hills led 33-28 at halftime and 50-41 after three quarters.

But Beckman made a late run cutting the lead to 61-59 on two free throws by Thoerner with 198.5 seconds left.

But Cal made two free throws with 14.7 seconds to push the lead to four and Owen Kim made one of two shots with 4.3 seconds left to account for the final margin.

“Sunny Hills did a great job defensively tonight,” said Beckman Coach John Goins.

“We would have our little runs but each time they would answer with a timely bucket and defensive play. I didn’t feel like we had the same intensity that we had displayed the past couple of games and I need to figure out what was different tonight from other nights.

“We didn’t get much contribution offensively tonight outside of Thoerner, Soma, and Muller, which makes it hard for us to stretch out defenses when they can focus on just a few guys. We will regroup and get ready for a tough El Toro team who took Newport Harbor down to the last play, and hopefully we will learn from this game and be more focused from now on.”

-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com