TWO LOCAL TEAMS PLAY FOR TITLES
Two years ago, Jimmy Beltz and the Elliot Christian boys basketball team were playing Brookside Christian for the Sac-Joaquin Section Division V Championship at Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento.
In the second quarter of the game, Beltz, then a sophomore on the Eagles, had an elbow put into his nose, breaking it.
“There was a lot of blood; it was all over court,” recalled Beltz. “I went back to their (Sacramento Kings’) training room, and they (trainers) stuffed tampons up my nose to stop the bleeding. At first, they put cotton in my nose, but it bled right through it in like 15 seconds.
“Then they sent me back out,” Beltz continued. “I went back (into the game) midway through the third quarter, and played the rest of the game.”
It didn’t go well for the Eagles, who watched the Knights crowned section champions on a floor covered with the Eagles’ sweat and blood following an 81-67 Brookside win.
But now the Eagles are back. Today, Beltz, a senior guard, and this year’s Elliot Christian squad (25-4), the D-V No. 1 seed, will take on No. 3 Argonaut of Jackson (22-7) for the section title inside the University of the Pacific’s Alex G. Spanos Center in Stockton. Tip-off is scheduled at noon. To reach the title game, Elliot raced past Ripon Christian 93-61, while Argonaut tripped up Brookside Christian, 57-54 in the semifinal games on Wednesday.
The winner and loser of today’s game are guaranteed NorCal playoff berths, which were clinched when Elliot, which went undefeated in Central California Athletic Alliance action, and Argonaut won their quarterfinal games toward the end of last week. The California Interscholastic Federation is expected to release its NorCal and SoCal brackets on Sunday.
Liberty Ranch (22-8), which lost to West Campus of Sacramento in the section’s D-IV semifinal game at The Jungle on the Tokay campus on Wednesday, has also earned a NorCal berth. The Hawks won their second consecutive Sierra Valley Conference title last month.
This is the first meeting this season between Elliot, which is averaging 73.7 points per game, and Argonaut, which is seeing its offense generate 63.6 points per game.
Beltz and Elliot are a different team this season than the one that played Brookside Christian in 2015.
“We relied on David Lerma,” said Beltz of the point guard who is currently a sophomore playing for San Joaquin Delta College. “But our bench was very weak that year. This year, we have nine guys who can come in and contribute. We are a very unselfish group of guys.”
Beltz, a shooting guard, leads the team in scoring with 19 points per game. Next in scoring, also from the Eagles’ backcourt, is Nathan Bond at 15.5 points per game and point guard Jaylene Valverde at 15.3. Rounding out the double-digit scoring for Elliot is guard Onkar Sidhu at 11.1. Forward Cody Doell provides 5.0 points per game.
“We have a lot more options than we did in the past year,” Beltz said.
On rebounds, the Eagles fly to the back of the boards, led by Valverde at 7.3 per game and Sidhu at 7.2. Bond is third at 6.8 and forward Cody Doell is next at 5.0 per game.
The Eagles will be taking on a Mustangs team that, according to Beltz and Elliot coach Jason Hitt, are similar in offensive approaches. Rely on the back court, and power the ball inside with front court players at times. The Mustangs’ key shooters are guard/forward Jared Votaw, at 15.8 points per game, guard Adison Cramer at 14.3 per game and forward Seth Tomczak at 11.5. Votaw and Cramer are juniors, and Tomczak is a sophomore.
“They’ve got a couple of real good shooters,” Beltz said. “I think we will match up well against them. They have a great up and down court.”
Hitt added, “We’re very aware of how good they are. They are a very physical team. They like pushing the ball. They don’t stop playing hard. This should be a pretty fun game to watch. It will be a very entertaining game.”
The Eagles’ practices, since the start of the playoffs last week, have taken a different approach than the regular season, Hitt points out.
“We’re fine tuning our shooting, putting in some new offensive stuff,” Hitt said. “The playoffs are a lot tougher than our league. We want to make sure our legs are fresh. The boys have done a great job of taking of their bodies, icing down after games. They’ve worked hard in the off-season.”
One of the pluses for the Eagles this season is that the players, despite playing many AAU basketball games last spring, summer and fall, have done an excellent job in conditioning and staying healthy, Hitt notes.
“I think we have a lot more depth as far as juniors an seniors who have played basketball in the off-season,” Hitt said.
The Eagles’ pre-season schedule is another reason for their success. They knocked off Jesuit of Carmichael, which plays in the Delta League that is D-I, plus West, which advanced to the D-I semifinals before losing to Sheldon of Sacramento on Wednesday, and Marin Catholic of Kentfield. Elliot also defeated Kimball, which like West is a member of the Tri-City Athletic League with Lodi and Tokay, Bear Creek, Antelope, Johnson of Sacramento and Elk Grove, also part of the DL.
“We’ve seen and played the higher caliber teams,” Hitt said. “We’ve had the toughest pre-season and had a lot of success in beating top-ranked opponents.”
Hitt is happy with his players playing hard in the playoffs. But knowing they will have to play harder against an Argonaut team that beat Brookside.
“We’re playing very solid,” Hitt said.
Beltz added, “We’re peaking at the right time as a team.”