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Maranatha boy’s basketball clinches first ever CIF Championship
Featured Mar 09, 2015
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After trailing 14 points halfway into the second quarter of the CIF Division 4A Championship game, the Maranatha High School Boy’s Basketball team rallied in the third quarter to win their first-ever CIF championship Friday night.
Marantha senior guard Tyler Dorsey and head coach Tim Tucker won their second CIF ring as the duo lead the Minutemen to a historical night that sends them to the state tournament next
week.
“In the second quarter we started to play defense,” Tucker said. “We came out [to the third quarter] and had a great start with a 7-0 run to take the lead, and so now they had to start making adjustments, and then it was just a game of adjustments.”
Tucker and Campbell Hall head coach Thomas Blunt switched back-and-forth with their tactics
as the second half of the game became much tighter and every error counted toward the other team’s advantage. Rebounds and free-throws were key to the championship game, with Dorsey and junior center Trevor Stanback grabbing crucial boards and sinking vital shots from the charity stripe.
“Big game like this, things tend to settle down,” Blunt said. “Basically came up to an offensive rebound here and a missed free-throw there. We didn’t do anything specifically or special, we just wanted to play in tight and make good players work for everything that they can get.”
Junior center Trevor Stanback, who was injured for much of the entire regular season with the
Minutemen, tied it up for Maranatha before giving them their first lead of the game. The Vikings stayed close to the Minutemen with senior guard and UCLA-commit Aaron Holiday leading Campbell Hall throughout the third quarter, finishing it off by cutting the Minutemen lead to one.
“I knew what he wanted to do, I know his game and I played him in freshman year, so I
remembered what he likes to do,” Dorsey said, who guarded the Vikings senior and future Pac-12 rival for much of the game. “He likes to get to the basket and drive to create fouls, so I knew to stay on my guard for a little bit.”
Holiday continued to power through the court with a game-tying three-pointer, but in the dying moments of the game, it was Maranatha junior guard Sean Romero who came up clutch with his own shot from downtown to give the Minutemen a four-point lead.
“It was the same routine,” Romero said, whose threes have been crucial to the Minutemens’
offense through the playoffs. “Little bit more nervous since I never been here before, and I had a rough beginning to the game. Had to get used to the ball, had to get used to the rim, the loudness and everything, but everyone had faith in me.”
