High School Male Athlete of the Week: Preston Amarillo played big for Fountain Valley basketball
Preston Amarillo does not tower over opponents, but at 6-foot-4, he was the tallest regular on the Fountain Valley High boys’ basketball team.
The Barons liked to push the pace whenever they could, and Amarillo was a big part of that. Yet with his size, he would also have to guard bigger opponents inside.
The versatility was a strength of Amarillo, one of three team captains. The junior wanted to do whatever it took to help Fountain Valley win, acting like a senior on a team that had just one of those, Jared Habibeh. His season averages were well-rounded, with 14 points, eight rebounds and four assists per game.
“He was just our constant,” Fountain Valley coach D’Cean Bryant said. “It was interesting because a lot of guys, when he walked into the gym or whenever he was around, everyone would kind of go, ‘We’re fine.’ He just had that demeanor during the year, even off the court. He was just the glue guy. He kept everyone even-keel when things got out of line at practice, guys weren’t locked in. It was great to have a guy like that around.”
Amarillo and Bryant, who was hired in June 2017 after assistant coaching gigs at Riverside King and Orange Lutheran, were both in their third season with the team. Fountain Valley enjoyed a breakthrough season with players like Amarillo and emerging star junior guard Jeremiah Davis, as well as sophomore guards Aden Casarez and Roddie Anderson. Junior forward John Kubas also stepped up in the postseason.
Amarillo started taking basketball seriously in middle school through the encouragement of his parents, Gabriel and Stephanie. Gabriel played basketball at Century High, and Preston’s older brother, Nicholas, played basketball and football at Fountain Valley.
Preston Amarillo said he met Davis when they started playing AAU basketball together in middle school, with a team called the OC Regulators. The team was coached by Chris Terry, a former coworker of Stephanie Amarillo.
“He just made the right play at the right time. He’d hit two big threes, or he took the big charge. He changed the game when he did things like that. He just outworked you, and he knows he has to do that because he’s a guard but he’s playing big for us.”
— D’Cean Bryant, Fountain Valley coach, on Preston Amarillo
When high school came around, Preston Amarillo said he urged Davis to join the Barons.
“We’re real close,” Amarillo said. “I told him that if we keep playing together, we’re going to have something special. We already had a good connection. I just told him that we could do whatever we really put our minds to, and he agreed with me.”
Fountain Valley (21-10), which won just nine games last season, was off and running this season. Amarillo said he knew the Barons would be good as early as the Marina summer league.
“We were smacking teams, killing teams,” Amarillo said. “We didn’t even have any sets. We barely even practiced our defense as a team, you know, but we were killing teams. Our confidence boosted up, and from there, I just knew that we had something special going on. We just had to keep going.”
The Barons finished as Wave League runner-up to Laguna Beach, a mild disappointment, but they went on to earn a 61-50 win at Yorba Linda and reach the CIF Southern Section Division 3A semifinals. They were the first team in program history to make it that far.
Fountain Valley made its first appearance in the CIF State playoffs, and more highlights were ahead. Though the Barons were seeded No. 15 in the Southern California Regional Division III tournament, they upset No. 2 Gardena 66-63 and No. 10 Los Angeles Price 71-47 on the road before ultimately losing 78-58 at No. 11 Burbank Providence in a regional semifinal game.
Jeremiah Davis scores 26 points as the Barons’ historic season will continue Saturday after beating the Knights 71-47 in the CIF State SoCal Regional Division III quarterfinals.
Amarillo views the run with some sense of accomplishment, but also regret.
“It felt pretty good, but we knew at the end of the day that we honestly should have done better,” he said. “We’ve been making a lot of noise, making it into the CIF semifinals and the first time ever in state. People were like, ‘Good job, you guys have a good team.’ At the end of the day, we think we could have gotten further. We could have possibly made both championship games.”
Amarillo scored a season-high 23 points in a 75-59 win over Westminster in the first round of the Division 3A playoffs. He nearly had a triple-double against Gardena in the first round of regionals, putting up 14 points, eight rebounds and nine assists.
Stat lines like these were what Bryant liked to see.
“You’d look at the box score and you’d be like, ‘Wait a minute, he had 10 assists, he had 11 assists, eight assists?’” Bryant said. “He just made the right play at the right time. He’d hit two big threes, or he took the big charge. He changed the game when he did things like that. He just outworked you, and he knows he has to do that because he’s a guard but he’s playing big for us.”
Preston Amarillo
Born: May 23, 2003
Hometown: Fountain Valley
Height: 6 feet 4
Weight: 190 pounds
Sport: Basketball
Year: Junior
Coach: D’Cean Bryant
Favorite food: Hamburger
Favorite movie: “The Maze Runner”
Favorite athletic moment: When defense led to a dunk by teammate Jeremiah Davis in the quarterfinals of the CIF Southern Section Division 3A playoffs at Yorba Linda this year.
Week in review: Amarillo helped the Barons reach the semifinals of the CIF State Southern California Regional Division III playoffs before losing 78-58 at Burbank Providence on March 7.
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