Boys basketball: CdM runs out of gas

Steve Virgen

CORONA DEL MAR - When the Corona del Mar High boys basketball team

hosted Laguna Beach Wednesday in a Pacific Coast League opener, one coach

would walk away with his first win in the PCL.

The Artists (5-8, 1-0 in the PCL) used a 15-5 run in the third quarter

and held on for a 56-53 victory, giving Coach Rob Cullinan’s his first

PCL win.

CdM’s Ryan Curry, also a first-year coach, will have to wait for his

first league win after his Sea Kings (4-14, 0-1) dug themselves in a hole

they could not crawl out of.

“You get beat by three, so I’m going to go home and think of a

thousand things that could have won the game,” Curry said. “Of course,

Rob is going to go home and think of, ‘had we done a thousand things

better we would have won by 20.’ We’re just coaches. We’re all optimists.

I told the kids, ‘just let it go, learn from it and regroup for practice

(today).’ ”

The Sea Kings did a bit of regrouping in the fourth quarter. After

falling by 10 (44-33 with 6:45 remaining), CdM retaliated with a 14-5

run. After junior Kevin Mancillas, who scored a game-high 25 points, hit

his sixth three-pointer of the night he drew the Sea Kings within, 49-45,

with 3:40 left, forcing Cullinan to call a timeout.

CdM sophomore Pancho Seaborn scored an easy bucket underneath after

Brandon Sherick-Odom found him down low with just under three minutes,

putting the Sea Kings down by two.

The Artists pulled away for a five-point lead. But Mancillas knocked

down his seventh and final three-pointer with one minute left, when he

ran through his teammates’ screens, took a pass from Sherick-Odom and

bombed a shot near the baseline. Curry then called his last timeout with

his Sea Kings down, 52-50.

With 32 seconds left, Jay Northridge, the Sea Kings starting sophomore

point guard, stripped the ball away from Laguna Beach senior Trevor Lyle,

who scored 22 points. He handed the ball over to Mancillas, who tried for

a three-pointer and missed.

Lyle grabbed the rebound and also made four free throws down the

stretch.

Northridge sank a three-pointer with one second left.

“I’ll live and die with Kevin shooting end-of-the-game shots,” Curry

said of his star forward, who shot 8 of 22 from the field (36%),

including 7 of 15 from beyond the arc (47%). Mancillas shot 14 of CdM’s

22 shots in the first half, when the Sea Kings trailed 20-19.

“Our problems are at the defensive end,” Curry said. “We’re not

capable of getting a huge rebound when we need it. We’re not capable of

forcing a shot clock violation. When you can’t get a defensive stop, it

makes every offensive possession so valuable. That’s the problem we’ve

run into this year. We need to get better defensively.”

BOYS

PACIFIC COAST LEAGUE

Laguna Beach 56, Corona del Mar 53

Laguna Beach 10 10 20 16 - 56

Corona del Mar 7 12 9 25 - 53

Laguna Beach - Gabbard 5, Leahy 4, Lyle 22, Boyd 19, Renault 5, Sands

1.

3-pt. goals - Lyle 2, Gabbard 1, Leahy 1, Boyd 1.

Fouled out - none.

Technicals - none.

Corona del Mar - Mancillas 25, Seaborn 7, Glass 0, Matsen 7,

Northridge 3, Welch 4, Sherick-Odom 3, Hildebrandt 2, Najar 2.

3-pt. goals - Mancillas 7, Matsen 1, Northridge 1, Sherick-Odom 1.

Fouled out - Welch.

Technicals - none.