Balanced effort helps Gridley boys top Oroville
Gridley has won six of its last seven games
OROVILLE >> Slowing the Northern Section’s leading scorer was at the forefront of Oroville’s gameplan against Gridley on Thursday night.
The Tigers boys basketball team mostly succeeded in doing that, making Gridley junior Grant Tull earn nearly all of his 14 points. But it was the Bulldogs’ supporting cast who made the biggest difference by the end of the game.
Tony Murillo set the pace early, scoring at will in transition with 15 of his 16 points coming in the first half, Colby Norton and Cameron Erickson each collected 11, and Cesar De La Torre added seven off the bench, helping the Bulldogs earn a 5941 road win over Tigers.
“We play so much better when we play fast, pushing it up the floor,” Murillo said. “Because we’ve got kids that can finish — with Grant, Cameron, Colby — all of us can finish pretty well at the rim. That has a lot to do with it.”
Over the last three weeks, Gridley (16-7, 5-1 Butte View League) has won six of its last seven games.
“We come in and we work on our game every single day,” Murillo said. “Coach (Chay Dake) points out to us after a game, ‘you need to work on this,’ and we go into practice and we work on that. Over the past few games, it’s been showing. Our free-throw percentages have been going up, our finishing around the rim … defense, everything.”
Murillo asserted himself in the first minute of the game, scoring four points, including one as he was drawing a foul, to go along with two rebounds.
After Tull made a fadeaway jumper along the baseline to start the second quarter, Murillo picked up where he left off, pushing the fastbreak and drawing the and-one on a layup. He converted another 3-point play one minute later, and capped the half with a 3-pointer to put Gridley ahead 36-20.
Tull, who averages a sectionleading 26.6 points per game, made four field goals on the night and added six points from the free-throw line.
“Overall, I thought we played really well,” Oroville coach Josh Osborn said. “(We) frustrated Tull all night. He ended up with 14, but it was free throws and stuff at the end. The point guard (Murillo) got us in the first half… He’s a great penetrator and he did his stuff.”
In the third quarter, the pace of the game slowed, which appeared to favor Oroville in the half court.
De La Torre scored on a layup one minute into the quarter, to
put Gridley up 39-20, before the Tigers started to come back.
Troy Moench, Oroville’s leading scorer with 12 points, scored five straight for Oroville. Then, Johnny Holmes and Omar Osby both created scoring chances with offensive rebounds, to bring the Tigers within 41-27.
Oroville trailed 46-34 entering the final quarter after Osby made 1-of-2 free throws with two seconds left in the third. Oroville outscored Gridley 14-9 over those eight minutes.
“I told the kids, ‘keep your shoulders high,’ Osborn said. “This is one of the top teams in the section and we’re battling them. It was a battle. We got be
hind early and it was a battle to get back, but it was a battle the whole game.”
Gridley opened the fourth with layups from De La Torre and Erickson, before Norton connected on a baseline jumper, putting the Bulldogs up 52-36 with under five minutes to go.
“We were slow and we just settled down a little bit,” Norton said. “Our emotions were a little high. We brought it together and then just got right back into our game.”
With losses to University Prep and Orland, in overtime, earlier in the week, Oroville (11-9, 3-3 Westside League) needed a strong game to get back on track. Even though Thursday didn’t end with a win, the Tigers were upbeat afterward, looking ahead to the coming weeks.
“Spirits are really high in the locker room,” Osborn said. “They played hard. Like I said, just continue this momentum that we had for this game into the next and see where it takes us.”