Jaiden Sabino of Woodbridge is defended by Devin McGee of El Camino Tuesday night. (Photos courtesy Jose Lomboy).
It didn’t take long for Woodbridge High School’s boys basketball team to get going Tuesday night in the opening round of the CIF Division III So Cal Regionals against El Camino.
The Warriors, who hadn’t played since Friday, Feb. 16 when they lost to Alemany 60-45 in the semifinals of the CIF Division 3A playoffs, came out firing Tuesday night.
Woodbridge jumped out to a 13-0 lead, led 24-6 after one quarter and coasted to a 57-42 victory at Woodbridge.
To see the slide show, click on the first photo:
No. 5 Woodbridge (22-10) moves on to the second round Thursday at No. 4 Don Bosco Tech, which defeated Rancho Buena Vista 87-83 Tuesday night.
Jaiden Sabino led the Warriors with a strong first quarter performance, scoring 11 of his game high 20 points, bouncing back from an off-night shooting against Alemany.
“First quarter, Jaiden Sabino showed up,” said Woodbridge Coach Steve Scoggin. “I really challenged him because against Alemany he didn’t do that well. Their point guard got him pretty much the whole game so I challenged him to redeem himself and he showed up. He was battling some sickness last week but he showed up, made some shots and got that confidence. We needed that.”
Woodbridge led 34-18 at halftime and El Camino was never able to cut into the lead. The Warriors led 46-27 going into the final stanza.
“The boys stayed focused,” Scoggin said. “It’s kind of how it’s been all year, one game at a time, keep playing, keep playing.”
Woodbridge also got strong efforts from Jason Briggs (14 points) and Stephen Lamp (11 points).
“It was one of Jason’s best games he’s had all year,” Scoggin said. “He was aggressive, he was attacking the rim.”
“It’s been 30 years since we had a team like this,” added Briggs, a junior. “Our team is really good, we’re coachable, we came out hard and we didn’t want to go home on the first round, we just want to make a run in this. In the first quarter, we can’t come out soft, because it happened earlier in the year, we just got to play hard throughout the whole game.”
El Camino (16-16) was led by Isaiah Pomare, who had 13 points.
It was the first win in a state tournament game since 1997 when the Warriors defeated Bakersfield South, according to former coach John Halagan.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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