Montclair Prep Beats Oak Park in a Cold War

Steve Goldstein’s Oak Park High basketball team was bloodied and beaten when it left Montclair Prep on Wednesday night.

But on the bright side, Goldstein won a free lunch.

Montclair Prep defeated Oak Park, 41-32, in a Southern Section 1-A Division wild-card game marked by several brief scuffles and wretched shooting by both sides.

Montclair Prep Coach Howard Abrams and Goldstein, who assisted Abrams for four years before going to Oak Park, agreed before the game that the winner would treat the loser to lunch today.

“At least Goldie gets a meal out of it,” Abrams said.

There was little else for Goldstein to be happy about. His Eagles (12-12) shot a miserable 9% (2 of 22) in the first half and just 23% for the game, making only 11 field goals. They were 0 of 9 in the second period, yet led at halftime, 14-13.

The Mounties (16-6) fared little better, converting 26% of their shots as both teams threw up enough bricks to build a pathway to Oz.

Said Goldstein when asked about his team’s shooting: “What shooting?”

Oak Park came out in a triangle-and-two defense designed primarily to stop the Mounties’ Craig Handschu. It worked for a while, but Handschu was the only player to reach double figures, scoring 23 points, more than half his team’s total.

“I knew he was going to come out in the triangle-and-two,” Abrams said. “It really worked--and we worked on it all week, too.

“Our teams know each other so well,” added Abrams, whose team split two previous games with Goldstein’s team this season. “We know where each other shoot, where players are supposed to turn in the offense. Maybe a couple of them turned the wrong way and that’s what caused the problems.”

The “problems” were several skirmishes. One involved Oak Park’s Jason Stein and the Mounties’ Ennis Howard. Another involved Montclair Prep’s David Sanger and the Eagles’ Richard Chavez. No punches were delivered and no technical fouls were assessed.

One Oak Park player, Mitch Harris, left the game in the fourth period nursing a bloody nose he received during a play under the basket.

Handschu scored nine points in the third period as Montclair Prep began to assert itself. The Mounties led, 25-24, after the third period and steadily pulled away in the final quarter as they made 7 of 10 field-goal attempts.

Montclair Prep travels to Pasadena Poly on Friday for a first-round game.