PIAA Class A playoff action
After bad half, California explodes to put away Clarion BUTLER – As performances go, California’s was about half in the Trojans’ 58-39 win over Clarion in a PIAA Class A boys basketball playoff game Tuesday night.
The second half, to be more specific.
The Trojans played perhaps their worst half of basketball before intermission, then pulled away from the over-matched Bobcats in the second half.
“I don’t think we played very well at all,” junior center Dan DeMoss said. “That first half was the worst we’ve played all year, but we were only down four at the half, so we felt fortunate. The second half, coach told us to settle down and we started making plays.”
California improved to 21-6 and will meet Union, a winner over West Middlesex last night, in a PIAA quarterfinal game Friday at a site and time to be determined. Clarion finished its season 21-8. The game will be a rematch of the WPIAL semifinals, in which Union knocked out the Trojans en route to its WPIAL title.
“I know these kids want another chance at Union,” Trojans coach Steve Luko said. “They don’t like losing to anybody and Union is the last team to beat us. I told them they had better play better than this if they want to win that game.”
Not surprisingly, the Trojans turned this game around with defense, which led directly to offense in the form of transition baskets.
Trailing 23-19 at intermission, California opened the third quarter with a 16-3 run to take a 35-26 lead. The catalyst of the run was senior Ryan Robinson, who had a couple of steals and scored eight straight points for the Trojans.
The Trojans led, 39-30, after three quarters, thanks to a 20-7 edge in the third quarter.
“We switched defenses in the third quarter and that worked pretty well for us,” Luko said. “We went into a 1-1-3, which we call our Fresno, because they were getting the baseline on us. Our forwards weren’t sliding over. We switched from that to a man-to-man.”
No matter what Luko tried in the second half, it seemed to work.
“The first half was just ugly,” Luko said. “We missed six or seven layups and we had all kinds of turnovers (11, including eight in the first quarter). We were fortunate to be down only four as lousy as we were playing.”
The Trojans’ scoring edge in the third quarter made Luko a bit happier, even though he expressed some concern about California’s inability to successfully take time off the clock.
“We came out and did a much better job in the third quarter than we had been doing,” Luko said. “We got a lead and forced them to play our game, instead of us playing their game. But we’ve still got to take better care of the ball with a lead. We put up some shots in the fourth quarter we should not have taken.”
Still, his team kept Clarion under 10 points in the fourth quarter (9) and under 20 (16) in the second half, when his team was putting up 39. Robinson led the way with 20 points for California, while Shane Tonkavitch added 12 and Rick Cope and DeMoss added 10 each. DeMoss led Cal with 13 rebounds and five blocked shots, while Cope added 10 boards and three blocks.
Joel McNeil was Clarion’s only double-figure scorer with 12.
Clarion coach Rob Leone thought the Trojans had their way even in the first half, but couldn’t do much to change it in the second. The Bobcats have made a habit of keeping games in the 40’s with solid defense and a deliberate offensive approach.
“I thought we played their game in the first half,” Leone said. “We wanted them to play ours in the second half. Unfortunately, a few of our kids didn’t quite understand that. It resulted in a couple of turnovers and easy baskets for them.”
That’s why Leone’s team came out in the second half and seemed intent on holding onto the basketball, even if it only had a one-point lead, which it did when Cope scored to make it a 26-25 game midway through the third. From there, though, Cal scored the next 10 points.
“When they were running their delay in the third quarter, my assistant (Scott Bartolomucci) wanted us to stay in the zone, which we normally would do,” Luko said. “For whatever reason, I pulled it out. I said, ‘Let’s see what they can do against our man (defense).’ I didn’t want to get caught up playing their game. I figured, let’s play our game.”
That, they did, as Robinson scored 16 of his 20 in the second half.
“We knew that both of their guards were quick,” Leone said of Robinson and Tonkavitch.
“They both did a nice job of beating our press, especially Robinson.”
“Robinson played a nice game for us,” Luko said. “He had some good steals (seven), a lot of nice passes and he scored for us, too. Once we got into our transition game, we started finishing. In the first half, we just weren’t finishing.”
Clarion got to within nine, 41-32 early in the fourth quarter, but California ripped off the next 12 points to make it 53-32 and won going away.