Big third quarter lifts Sonora past Sunny Hills 67-59 at Rumble for Rosecrans Avenue boys basketball tournament

Sonora sophomore Daniel Esparza, an an all-league player last year, had 24 points to lead the Raiders past Sunny Hills Saturday in the Rumble for Rosecrans Avenue Tournament. (Tim Burt photo).

Sonora’s boys basketball team got rolling in the third quarter and held on to defeat Sunny Hills 67-59 in the third place game of the Rumble for Rosecrans Avenue Tournament Saturday at Sunny Hills.

In an early season battle of two Freeway League teams, Sunny Hills led 28-26 at halftime but the Raiders (4-1)  outscored the Lancers 25-16 in the third quarter to take control.

Sophomore David Esparza scored 14 of his 24 points in the quarter to lead Sonora.

“The third quarter was great; we got out running, that was our main goal for the game, we couldn’t really do that in the first half and once we did that that’s when we got our advantage and our lead,” said Esparza, who was all-league last year and according to Coach Mike Murphy is “one of the best sophomores in the county.”

Sonora is making progress Murphy said.

“We played really good in the third quarter,” Murphy said. “We’re a really young team, I’ve got three sophomores, a freshman and bunch of juniors and only one senior and we make so many mistakes. It’s how it’s been all year and I’m hoping that as the year goes along, we’re going to become more mature. We miss defensive assignments and have breakdowns, but for most of them it’s the first experience on varsity basketball so it’s going to take a while.”

Tobin Igros added 18 points and Garrett Bell 14 points for Sonora.

Luke Hosozawa and Wilson Cal 16 points each to lead Sunny Hills, which won the first three games of the tournament before dropping the last two.

“I thought our guys played pretty well today,” said Sunny Hills Coach Joe Ok. “Sonora is really tough, they’re always tough. This definitely had a little bit of a league feel to it. We had a nice lead in the third quarter and then we had a bad stretch there toward the end of third quarter and I think that killed what we were doing, momentum wise. But all in all, it was a good effort.

“We get to see them two more times so we’re going to make some adjustments and we will hopefully be ready to play them in league. It was a good week overall. I think we got a lot of things accomplished to that we wanted as a team in terms of execution. It’s still early in the season, but we want to eventually keep getting better so that by the time we get to league, that we’re firing on all cylinders.”

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