La Mirada, Gomez fall short of title, lose to Rancho Christian
ONTARIO ❯❯ Julien Gomez did everything he could to bring La Mirada its first CIF Southern Section boys basketball championship.
But the sophomore and the rest of his teammates could never get over the hump, falling to top seed Rancho Christian 63-55 in Saturday's Division 2A title game at Colony High.
It was Rancho Christian's third trip to the CIFSS finals and second championship since 2016, and it handed La Mirada (24-9) its second straight loss in a title game.
While La Mirada has never won a section title, it did win the CIF State Division II championship in 2015.
Rancho Christian (22-10) and La Mirada will be in the CIF State regional playoffs, which start Tuesday.
Gomez scored a gamehigh 32 points, and although he was disappointed by the loss he knew that Rancho Christian was the real deal.
Rancho Christian's Kevin Patton Jr., a transfer from Arizona who is committed to play at the University of San Diego, scored a teamhigh 18 points with 10 rebounds and Rodney Brown Jr., who is headed to Cal, finished with 16 points.
“Last year and this year was extremely difficult to take,” Gomez said of the finals losses. “It's not easy to win games in the playoffs. But I do feel like we played a better team in the finals this year than last year. That was an Open Division (type) of a team. I can accept that. I love playing against great competition.”
Gomez tried to will the Matadores back from an 11-point halftime deficit, scoring all 13 of the team's third-quarter points to cut the Eagles' lead to two points midway through the third quarter. And after the Eagles surged ahead again in the fourth, Gomez got hot again, and had a would-be tying 3-point shot rim out with four minutes left, and that was it.
“If I make that it's a 0-0 game,” Gomez said. “That was a big one.”
Rancho Christian responded with seven straight points to go up 59-51 with a 1:30 left and held on.
“We're a third-quarter team, so we weren't panicking at halftime,” La Mirada coach Randy Oronoz said. “We were just trying to make some adjustments. We had a couple shots that didn't drop, but credit to them, they hit some big shots when they needed to.”
Rancho Christian coach Ray Barefield was impressed with La Mirada's grit.
“You have to give credit to their coach (Oronoz), he does a tremendous job and I was watching a lot of film, sometimes two times a day,” Barefield said. “Gomez is a special kid, if he's on, some nights, it's tough. He has such poise. But I thought our guys did well and responded when they had to.”
Patton and Brown, it seemed, were too much for the Matadores whenever the game got close.
“We knew they were going to come out with energy (in the second half), but we stuck together as a team and executed,” Patton said.
Brown was impressed with Gomez, but he knew their team effort would win out.
“I thought we came together as a team when they made their runs,” Brown said. “They kind of have one man, and for us, it's all of us.”
The Eagles finished the half strongly, taking their biggest lead, 38-27, on Patton's coast-to-coast breakaway layup.
Gomez, who scored 12 first-half points, came out aggressively to begin the third quarter, getting to the foul line on three straight possessions, the final a three-point play to cut the Eagles' lead to 38-32.
Gomez wasn't done. He scored 11 straight points, including right-handed and left-handed layups to bring the La Mirada within 40-38.
But Brown stopped the bleeding with a 3-pointer and Patton hit a jumper for a quick 5-0 run that pushed the Eagles' lead to 45-38, and they kept surging to take a 49-40 lead to the fourth quarter. Gomez scored all 13 of the Matadores' points in the third quarter.
Bailey Chambers and Kollen Murphy each had eight points for Rancho Christian. La Mirada didn't have a second player in double figures; Sean Cervantes finished with seven points and Athan Sierra had six.