San Juan Hills players and coaches celebrate after capturing the title at the Luis Macias Tournament. (PHOTOS: Fernando M. Donado, For OC Sports Zone).
San Juan Hills boys basketball team sprinted to an 11-0 lead out of the gate and went on to defeat South Coast League rival Trabuco Hills 62-48 in the championship game of the Luis Macias Tournament at Santa Ana High School Saturday afternoon.
The Stallions, led by tournament MVP Mason Hodges, who scored a game-high 25 points, finished the tournament 4-0 and was the best player in the tourney. Trey Webb had nine points and Cameron Goltara eight points for the Stallions.
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“I’m happy and I’m proud of the boys for putting in the work this week,” said San Juan Hills Coach Jason Efstathiou. “I like that we didn’t play our best basketball this week and I think it’s a good thing that we were able to get a few wins and victories despite maybe not playing the cleanest ball.
“It’s important for these guys who have been together because when they were younger, we would get games where we up not by a tremendous amount, but we’re up then all of a sudden we would cough up that lead. I think we’ve shown in this tournament that we’re doing much better in holding our leads.”
San Juan Hills led 20-6 after one quarter.
After the initial run by the Stallions, Trabuco Hills got untracked, closing the lead to 29-21 on a 3-pointer by Scott Warnick with 1:10 left in the second quarter. But San Juan Hills led by 10 at halftime, maintained a 49-37 lead after three quarters and led comfortably in the fourth quarter.
Tai Gan, who was named all-tournament, led the Mustangs (2-2) with 16 points. Ryan Hull added 11 points and seven rebounds and Warnick scored 11 points.
“It would be nice to not spot them a 17-point lead three and a half minutes into the game,” said Trabuco Hills Coach Sean Sullens. “But that’s when you’re a young team and you’re facing a team that’s returning the majority of the roster. That’s where we have to build by the time we play them again in January.
“‘We turned the ball over six times just on baseline out of bounds violations. Those are fixable things. Our rebounding, we’re under-sized and that’s going to be an issue going forward but we had three guys in double digits, we played some darned solid defense, they hit some contested shots and we missed a ton of makeable shots at the rim. We have to build and get ready to play them in January.”
Like other teams, the Mustangs had trouble containing Hodges, who scored 17 of his points in the first half.
“It’s always going to be tough vs. a league rival,” said Hodges, who is averaging 25.2 points in the first four games. “We knew what to expect and we came out and we went up by 14 and we knew they weren’t going to back down. It was a pretty close game for the majority of it. Those are the games we need to play for sure.
“It’s a great start to our season, we’ve got a lot to improve upon, but we’re trying to move to 5-0, our next game, we have a pretty tough prep school (Mater East Academy), so we’re tunnel vision onto the next game.”
Hodges, who said he Saturday has not committed to a college for next year, said the South Coast League figures to be quite a challenge.
“We have a lot of strong teams in our league,” he said. “Tesoro is in the championship over at the Jim Harris Classic, San Clemente is 3-1 right now with a tough loss to La Mirada who is a pretty good team. Our league is stacked and we’re trying to prepare for it. But we know we have a lot to work on to get ready for January.”
Hodges said he was excited to earn the MVP award, but credited his teammates.
“I couldn’t do it without the rest of my guys,” he said. “They can’t double team me too hard because I have shooters in the corner who can knock them down. Our whole team got it done, it wasn’t like I got it done by myself.”
Efstathiou, the Stallions coach, said Hodges is doing “such a great job leadership wise, but the biggest thing I notice in him is the kind of teammatehe’s become, the way he’s leading in practice, the way he’s talking to guys. My goal as a captain is they become an extension of me and he’s become an extension of us and the coaching staff for sure.”
Efstathiou was also pleased with the play of Adam Aziz, who also played well during the week.
Chino Hills defeated Laguna Hills 61-27 in the third place game.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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