Beckman boys basketball team survives some rocky times to earn a berth in CIF playoffs

Beckman’s boys basketball team opens the CIF playoffs Friday. (Photo courtesy Beckman athletics).

CIF playoff hopes for Beckman High School’s boys basketball team appeared bleak early in the season.

The Patriots suffered a 10-game losing streak and dropped four consecutive Pacific Coast League games in January but finished the regular season strong, winning four of their last five games to finish in a five-way tie for second place.

Then, Beckman (10-17 overall, 6-6 in league) was on the right side of a coin toss and was declared one of the league’s automatic qualifiers in the playoffs, avoiding a league playoff game.

As a result, Beckman is headed to the CIF Division 2A playoffs Friday on the road against Suburban League champion La Mirada (13-13). The Patriots will be led by two players, including one who started the season as a team manager.

“Our team this year was inexperienced, having only two returners from last year’s varsity squad,” said Beckman Coach John Goins. “There are things that have been stressed that we need to be good at from day one, knowing that we do not have anyone over 6-2 on the roster, and defensively we were able to do a lot of things early on in the season against some extremely strong teams like Riverside Poly, St. Anthony and Fountain Valley.

“Unfortunately, on the offensive end we were able to get away with not being great due to some above average shooting to start the year. Once our shooting came back down to earth, our offense stalled which then started to affect us defensively and things just snow balled. We ended up dropping 10 in a row, and had 10 guys out with COVID during that stretch as well.”

After the team’s rough start in league, Goins started to re-evalute.

“After our 2-4 start in league, I decided to give some other options a look along with a renewed focus on the basics:  good shot selection, keeping the ball in front of us defensively, and boxing out,” he said.

“I stressed those things constantly in practice and film, and knew that winning would be a consequence of doing those things well. I think we had an identity issue for the first 20 games as we were trying to figure out who we were, but we found ourselves during the second half of league due to the players buying into the basics and embracing the fact that we are only going to see prolonged success by being great teammates first.

“We ended up winning four of the final six games of league, with two key players stepping up and earning significant minutes during that stretch, Abhi Acharya and Yousif Zanana. Abhi would shoot over 40 percent from 3 (point range) during that time, knocking down about three per game while leading us in scoring at 14 points per game or that stretch; and Yousif, who started the school year as a manager, ended up averaging 10 points and 10 rebounds, bringing fantastic energy onto the floor.”

Beckman had a chance to secure second place in the league finale against league champion Portola. But Portola held on for a 56-55 win.

“This ultimately led to a five-way tie for second which was worked out by placing the teams in a mini-league and reworking the standings from there for play-in games,” Goins said. “I know we won two coin flips, which I still do not understand how that worked, but luckily for us it gave us an automatic third place spot without having to participate in the play-in games over the weekend.”

Goins has been preparing his team for La Mirada, who he said, “won their league and played a fantastic non-league schedule. I’m already proud of what the boys have accomplished, especially in the last couple of weeks, but we will try and maintain our focus and momentum and see what happens on Friday night.”

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