Patrick Henry’s Kenny Caesar Finds His Home at Long Range

LA JOLLA —  Move the free-throw line back a handful of feet, and Kenny Caesar would probably be just fine. As it is, he might have to be content pumping in 3-pointers like nobody’s business and taking his lumps at the line.

Caesar, a rather imposing 6-foot 3-inch point guard for Patrick Henry, was 6 for 6 from 3-point range Tuesday during his team’s 55-35 drubbing of host La Jolla in a nonleague boys’ basketball game. He finished with a game-high 23 points.

But from the free-throw line, he was 1 for 3.

What gives?

“In practice I can make 30 in a row,” Caesar said. “But in the game, you have that one shot. You can’t shoot 10 in a row. I don’t want to shoot an air ball or something embarrassing.”

Fair enough. The 3-pointers count for three times as many points anyway, right?

“I feel more comfortable taking my shots from the outside,” Caesar said. “Everybody has told me I should be shooting more.”

It helped Tuesday. Terence Hamilton, Patrick Henry’s star forward and scoring leader, wasn’t in his usual groove. He finished with 12 but was playing hide and seek with his touch the whole game. La Jolla center Kyle Kupiec also contributed to Hamilton’s problems with strong defense. So Caesar took matters into his own hands.

“We needed that,” said Patrick Henry Coach Fritz Ziegenfuss, whose team improved to 11-8. “Terence had his worst shooting game of the year.”

La Jolla (12-7), which lost to Patrick Henry by just 7 earlier this season, was mired in difficulty from the start. Point guard David Berteaux was recovering from food poisoning and didn’t have the usual snap on his jump shot. And forward Adam Kleid went down in the first quarter with an ankle sprain and didn’t return.

“You figure if you take both Adam and David out of the lineup, you’ve taken out 34 points,” La Jolla Coach Rick Eveleth said.