Newport Harbor goes overtime and captures third place at Grizzly Invitational

Newport Harbor players support their teammates during Friday’s Grizzly Invitational semifinals.

Newport Harbor’s boys basketball team capped a successful week at the Grizzly Invitational, defeating Capistrano Valley Christian 64-59 in overtime Saturday night to capture third place in the 24-team tournament.

“We’ve got a lot of seniors on this team and they’ve played a lot of basketball and they compete and they’re pretty darn talented too,” said Newport Harbor Coach Robert Torribio.

Sam Barela hit a 3-pointer with 6.3 seconds left for the Sailors to tie it 53-53 and send the game into overtime.

“Sam is as good as any point guard I’ve seen in the county,” Torribio said. “He makes us look pretty good sometimes and he that again tonight.”

Will Harvey scored a basket with 1:01 left to to put Newport Harbor ahead 61-59 then sank two free throws in the final minute to give the Sailors a 4-point cushion en route to their fourth win in the tournament.

Dayne Chalmers led Newport Harbor (5-1) with 21 points and four 3-pointers. Robbie Spooner had 13 points and Barela scored 8 points.

Chalmers and Barela represented Newport Harbor on the all-tournament team.

“This was a great week, this was a really well run tournament with lots of good teams so for the Sailors to come in here and grab four wins is pretty impressive,” said Torribio.  “It says a lot about our guys. We battled last night (against Villa Park); obviously we had some tired legs but I’ll give our guys credit, they keep competing all night.”

Newport Harbor is back in action Tuesday at the St. Margaret’s Tournament to face Bell Gardens.

Festus Ndumayna, who was named to the all-tournament team, led Capistrano Valley Christian (3-2) with 20 points. Riely Petronis added 17 points.

GRIZZLY INVITATIONAL ALL-TOURNAMENT TEAM

PHOTOS FROM FRIDAY’S SEMIFINALS AND SATURDAY’S FINALS

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