Costa Mesa falls, 66-55

In the battle of big vs. small, the Esperanza High boys basketball

team prevailed with a sizeable 66-55 victory over Costa Mesa Friday, in

pool play action at the Loara Tournament.

Esperanza’s 6-foot-8 junior forward Mark Lovein towered over the

Mustangs (2-1) and dropped in a game-high 42 points.

However, it was Mesa’s turnovers, bad decisions and missed

three-pointers down the stretch that resulted in the loss, Mustangs Coach

Bob Serven said.

“A lot of this was just about bad decisions,” Serven said. “We had too

many turnovers (14). And maybe we just thought we couldn’t beat them.

That’s the way we played. We could have been up by 10 or 12 points at the half, and instead we only led by one.”

With less than three minutes in the first half, Mesa senior guard Chad

Vakili drained the first of his four three-pointers to give the Mustangs

a 25-18 lead. But Lovein and the Aztecs (3-0) quickly came back. Lovein

outscored Mesa, 5-2, just before the half and Esperanza guard Burke

Spencer added a three-pointer to cut the deficit to 27-26.