Valley teams eliminated from IHS Tourney contention
IMPERIAL — Day three of the Imperial Tiger Classic basketball tournament was a disappointing one for Valley hoops fans.
Both of the local teams remaining in the winner’s bracket — Calexico and Imperial — fell out of it, and both had hard landings.
The early game between Calexico and San Ysidro featured moments of genuinely exciting play, both teams obviously understood the game of basketball and knew how to play it at a high level.
And yet, the final score was San Ysidro 96, Calexico 56, which says all that needs to be said about the kind of firepower the Cougars were packing.
The Bulldogs honestly didn’t play a terrible game.
They were generally heady and looked like a cohesive unit.
Guards Matthew Tabarez, Fabian Reyna and Aaron Tabarez all made some “how about that” plays, and Julian Beltran had occasion to flex his rebounding muscles and show off his soft touch.
They were just outgunned. Really outgunned.
The Cougars, led by freshman DJ Dudley (who is ranked as high as 26th on certain class of 2022 recruiting boards), had a tight eight-man rotation in which every player looked to be at least as tall as Calexico’s tallest.
They looked something like the highschool equivalent of the modern NBA ideal of switchable pterodactyls.
On more than one occasion, Calexico turned the ball over simply because they failed to account for San Ysidro’s length and the Cougars snatched the ball out of the sky.
Again, the Bulldogs didn’t wilt in the face of this athleticism. For the most part, they kept their motors running and played heads up basketball, using their savvy to fake out Cougar defenders in the post and get poke-aways on defense.
It’s not that Calexico made no bad decisions, but they were more exception than rule
They made a lot of smart cuts, and were conscientious with their dribbles.
They were only down 15-12 after one and 32-22 at the half, but San Ysidro kept finding extra gears and eventually the dam broke (though, as an aside, it did seem as though the Cougars ran up the score a bit in the fourth).
Dudley finished with 33 points, 12 rebounds, six assists and three steals. Teammate Kailen Rains had 27.
The only man in double figures for Calexico was Reyna, who had exactly 10.
Obviously it wasn’t a result the Bulldogs were looking for, but their performance wasn’t indicative of their ceiling and they are likely among the teams that will be in the thick of Imperial Valley League title talk.
The evening’s second game featured host Imperial facing off against CETYS, who had staged a second-half comeback to knock off the Southwest Eagles the night before.
Tigers-Zorros turned out to be much more of a haphazard scramble than Bulldogs-Cougars had been.
Neither team played their best, but CETYS had a step on the Tigers most of the way.
They led 10-8 after a bump-and-grind first quarter, and they’d keep it (the lead, which got to be as large as 17 at one point) the rest of the way, going on to win 52-42.
A big issue for the Tigers was that the ball seemed to stick in odd spots.
A couple of days after moving the ball so well against Yuma, there seemed to be a wrench in the works somewhere.
This led to a lot of inefficient isolation offense that ended in off-balance heaves, making it difficult to stage much of a comeback.
Of course, it was also just one of those nights for the Tigers. They had an awful lot of open looks that they just couldn’t find the bottom of the net on.
CETYS wasn’t perfect but their 2-3 zone was able to frustrate a lot of Imperial’s sets, and they had the shooting juju that the Tigers sorely lacked, seeming to hit a well-timed triple anytime a comeback appeared to be brewing.
Eduardo Mendoza was the Zorros top scorer for the second night in a row, finishing with 22 points — twice as many as the Tigers leader, Robert Quintero — managing to be effective even while occasionally hogging the ball.
After the game Imperial coach Dave Milan was candid regarding his team’s performance.
“We came out flat,” he said. “We had some selfish play and didn’t work the ball around like we did against Yuma.” “Our defense failed tonight,” he added. Both Calexico and Imperial will now head to the consolation round robin. They play each other tomorrow at 3 p.m. at Imperial.