PHOTOS: Crean Lutheran rallies for another CIF Division 1 playoff victory to reach semifinals

Crean Lutheran’s Jordan Ceballos brings the ball up as Deuce Newt of Campbell Hall defends Tuesday night. (Photos courtesy Crean Lutheran Shutterbugs, John Luciano, Ted Rigoni and Howard Lyon).

Crean Lutheran High School’s boys basketball team found a way to comeback from a big deficit again Tuesday night and the reward was huge.

This time, the Saints rallied for a 73-66 victory over Campbell Hall in a CIF Division 1 quarterfinal round playoff game in front of a capacity crowd at Crean Lutheran. The Saints move on to face Los Alamitos Friday in the semifinals.

Los Alamitos will be the home team.

To see the slide show, click on the first photo:

Crean Lutheran trailed most of game vs. Brentwood in the second round Friday night and by as many as 14 points before winning. It was looking bleak for the Saints early on Tuesday as Campbell Hall moved out to a 21-8 lead in the first quarter.

But the Saints battled back to cut the lead to six points at halftime and then had a fantastic and spirited fourth quarter outscoring Campbell Hall 25-9. Freshman Jordan Ceballos led the Saints with 16 points, including nine points and a clutch 3-pointer in the final stanza.

Jacob Majok had 15 points and Matt Ciftcikara and Caden Jones 13 points each for Crean Lutheran. Campbell Hall (19-10) was led by Isaiah Johnson (20 points). Johnson, who has signed with University of Colorado, scored 43 points to help Campbell Hall knock off top-seeded Damien in the second round. Deuce Newt added 17 points for Campbell Hall.

“It was like the same thing, down eight or 10 in the fourth, it didn’t look good and we did a very similar thing against Brentwood in the last round,” said Saints Coach Nate Klitzing. “At halftime, we had a lot of turnovers, we were dribbling the ball a little too much and they were doing a good job trapping us.

“We didn’t have a lot of flow in the first half. Fortunately, we had a good finish, we went zone late in the half and that switched up the momentum for them, climbed back in it, got it to six at half and at that point it was like, ‘guys, we haven’t even started unleashing on offense yet, we got to keep grinding on defense and moving the ball more and we started doing that, especially in the fourth.'”

It paid off for the Saints.

Campbell Hall held a 57-48 lead after three quarters.

But Ciftcikara provided a spark hitting a pair of consecutive 3-pointers to cut the lead to 57-54 with 7:11 left, bringing the Saints Blue Zone student section to their feet.

Campbell Hall held a 64-63 lead but Ceballos came up big with two free throws and a 3-pointer to put Crean Lutheran ahead 68-64 with 1:20 left.

Hunter Caplan sank two free throws with 33 seconds left to put the Saints ahead 71-66. Shortly after that, Crean Lutheran students poured out onto the court to celebrate the win with the players.

“It was important for us, we wanted to win, our goal is to win a CIF championship,” said Ceballos. “The key to this game was just being as a team, never separating ourselves from each other other, listening to coaches instruction and thanks to God, we got the win.”

Ceballos, who was also exceptional on defense, said the advice from the coaches at halftime was simple.

“Keep on making them turn the ball over, convert our turnovers, take care of the ball and share the ball and just play basketball,” he said.

The victory was also special for Ciftcikara, who has impressed the Saints coaches with his hard work during his career.

“We came out pretty slow,” Ciftcikara said. “Our game plan was to stop number five (Johnson) and we honestly did a good job but we were helping off him on the wrong people and we changed that at half, props to our coaches, Coach Klitzing and Coach (Austin) Loeb, they all do their job, we fixed that, started to hit a couple shots and we were back in the game.

“Big credit to our Blue Zone (student section) keeping the energy up, we got to have energy with that type of comeback. It’s a great feeling, we’ve been a second half team all year, it’s great to pull through again.”

Crean Lutheran (18-11) extended its winning streak to six and also qualified for the CIF State Regional in March.

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