Crean Lutheran survives another road test and marches on to 2A semifinals

Crean Lutheran celebrates after Thursday’s win over Troy. (Photos courtesy Crean Lutheran High School)

Crean Lutheran’s boys basketball team seems to feel right at home, even playing on the road in front of a vocal crowd.

The Saints notched their second road victory of post season play and punched a ticket to Saturday’s CIF 2A semifinals defeating Troy 54-50 Thursday night at Troy.

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Crean Lutheran (18-13) will meet La Canada Saturday in the semifinals at Crean Lutheran beginning at 7 p.m. Crean Lutheran is the defending CIF 3AA champion.

“It means a lot, to come back to the semifinals after a lot of people thought we wouldn’t make it this far,” said Crean Lutheran guard Aiden Gilbert, who led his team with 26 points. “We knew we had the guys to do this; we just had to buy in and I think after that first win in CIF we bought in and it showed.”

Crean Lutheran led 28-22 at halftime but Troy outscored the Saints 20-12 in the third quarter to take a 42-40 lead going into the final stanza. Sophomore Kyle Pham provided the spark with 11 points in the quarter for Troy.

But Crean Lutheran turned it around with a 12-2 run to start the fourth quarter to flip the tide.

“There was a stretch there where they got hot shooting the ball and we picked up the pace man just to give them a new look and I think that was the key,” said Crean Lutheran Coach Nate Klitzing.

“Because it got them out of their groove and we were able to string together a few stops and rebounds and hit a few shots on our end which brought that lead a little bit bigger and gave us a little bit of comfort heading down the stretch.”

Troy (18-13) made one last run, cutting the lead to 53-53 on a 3-pointer by Rheis Chang with 40 seconds left.

Crean Lutheran missed the front end of a one-and-one free throw but Troy was unable to convert a 3-pointer. Drew Yezbak then made one of two free throws with about 20 seconds left to clinch the victory.

Many players stepped up for Crean Lutheran, but Gilbert led the way, sinking five 3-pointers.

“Aiden was incredible, he’s been great all year,” Klitzing said. “Every single game, he’s a stat stuffer and he does so much for our team. He led us today.”

Senior guard Chris Swardstrom had 13 points and nine rebounds and senior guard Jon Scherer had 11 points.

Troy got a strong performance from Cole Yauney, who had 20 points and 14 rebounds and Trevor Seesemann, who had eight points.

The Warriors upset No. 2 seeded Tesoro in the first round Tuesday in Las Flores but couldn’t create more magic Thursday.

Crean Lutheran players, supported by a large throng of student fans, celebrated their trip to the semifinals.

“I believe in them whole-heartedly,” Klitzing said. “They believe in themselves and they believe in our program. They’ve been through some tough things and we’ve been through a lot of adversity but we just keep fighting and we couldn’t be more proud of them.”

“It was really fun, we came in really prepared and we tried to follow the game plan and play together as a team,” added Swardstrom. “We are just making the extra pass, playing unselfish. Everybody was taking the right shot playing really well as a team.”

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

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