Newport Harbor boys wins school record 14th in a row and captures Century Tourney with 67-54 victory over Sunny Hills

Newport Harbor’s boys basketball team celebrates after winning the Century Elks Tournament Saturday night.

Newport Harbor’s boys basketball team was on from the start Saturday night in the championship game of the Century Elks Tournament at Century.

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Kind of the way the Sailors have been playing all year. Saturday night, Newport Harbor put on another clinic, recording a 67-54 victory over Sunny Hills in the title game to capture their second tournament championship this season.

Newport Harbor (18-1) won its 14th consecutive game, a school record surpassing the 2015-16 team’s accomplishment.

“When you have seniors who love playing basketball and love playing together and you mix in the younger guys with them, you really don’t have to worry about a whole lot,” said Newport Harbor Coach Robert Torribio. “The boys always come to play every night and they battle and they love being together.

“There are nights when it seems like these guys have kind of been playing together for years. You wouldn’t know it that they’ve only been playing together for six months.”

Newport Harbor was led by tournament MVP Sam Barela, who had nine points, seven assists and three steals. Robbie Spooner had 14 points and 11 rebounds, Dayne Chalmers had 22 points and five rebounds and Will Harvey had 16 points.

Spooner and Chalmers were named to the all-tournament team.

The Sailors jumped out to a 21-12 lead after one quarter and led 35-27 at halftime and 51-39 after three quarters.

Newport Harbor was able to maintain a lead of at least 10 points the rest of the way.

“Coach said it was our 19th game in 34 days, that’s a lot of basketball,” Barela said. “We went through a little bit of vacation blues as coach likes to say in our early stages. There were a lot of battles, it was a really good tournament. We just wanted to play basketball, and that’s what we did.

“All of our guys are playing really solid. And a lot of guys are stepping up. Elijah Firey stepped up big for us in this game. We’re on fire right now, we just want to keep it going.”

Sunny Hills (12-8) was led by Luke Hosozawa, who had 23 points and nine rebounds and Wilson Cal, who was held to six points, but had a great week, were named to the all-tournament team.

Sunny Hills reached the finals with an impressive 64-59 victory over Beckman Friday night in the semifinals. But the Lancers couldn’t contain Newport Harbor.

“We knew they were good coming in,” said Sunny Hills Coach Joe Ok. “They have five guys who can play basketball and can make shots and pass the ball with efficiency. They’re just a really good basketball team all around and they play well together.

“It didn’t help that we didn’t make shots tonight, but part of that was because of their defense. It was just one of those nights for us where it wasn’t going in much and defensively, we had some lapses. We tried to keep it a little close, but they would go on these little 4-0 and 6-0 runs and push it back up to 12. It kind of stayed there. For us, not shooting very well from the outside hurt us a little bit.”

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