By THOMAS LAROCCA
FOXSportsWest.com
Mar. 1, 2011
Trailing by as many as 15, the undersized Corona Centennial Huskies used a frantic fourth quarter run to upset the heavily favored Mater Dei Monarchs, 60-58 in the 2011 CIF-SS Div I-AA Boys Basketball semifinal game at the Anaheim Convention Center on Tuesday night. Centennial will Long Beach Poly in the CIF SS championship game, a contest that will be streamed live here on FOXSportsWest.com at 6 p.m. Saturday.
"When it looks like it's out of control, that is when we are playing our game," Centennial head coach Josh Giles said. "When it is hectic and it looks crazy, that is when we have the game right where we want it."
The crazy comeback started with a minute left in the third with Mater Dei leading, 44-34. Centennial would go on a stunning 20-3 run to take a commanding seven-point lead with just under five minutes to play. A trio of seniors - Gelaun Wheelwright, Dominique Dunning and Michael Caffey - combined for all 20 of the points during the run.
"When got down 15, we never panicked," Giles said of his senior-laden squad. "It's a 32-minute game; you got a long time to come back. There is no such thing as a 12 or 15-point shot, you have to chip away and that is what we did in the second half."
A pair of three pointers 21 seconds apart by Caffey pulled the Huskies with in one with just over seven minutes to play and put the crowd in a frenzy. A goaltending call gave Centennial their first lead of the game 47-46 just over a minute later.
"I hit those two big shots and our bench just went crazy," Caffey said. "The crowd was crazy and our bench was crazy and it fired up our defense. Our defense, our bench and our crowd won this game."
Mater Dei head coach Gary McKnight said, "Caffey makes that team run. Dunning is a good, strong player and Wheelwright is a good shooter, but Caffey is their leader and he got going."
Two free throws from Caffey and a put back from Dunning pushed the lead to five, and after a Mater Dei free throw, Wheelwright nailed a three and like that Centennial was up seven and Mater Dei was in serious trouble.
Caffey led all scorers with 23 points, while Wheelwright added 18 and Dunning 11. The rest of the Centennial roster combined for eight points.
The Monarchs would not go down without a fight, however. Down seven, junior Eli Stalzer hit a jumper and a three pointer and junior Katin Reinhard dunked home a rebound as Mater Dei trimmed the lead to one with seconds remaining. But Stalzer could hit just one of two free throws with nine seconds left and Centennial's Chris Popov hit two of four down the stretch to seal the upset.
"We played a great first half," McKnight said of his team. "But you can't win with 24 turnovers. Give all the credit to Centennial, they keep coming at you. They are a worthy opponent. I wish them the best."
Giles agreed. "It was a tale of two halves," he said. "We talked about it at halftime. We were not playing our style of basketball and were not hitting shots and they were not missing. If we were going to lose, we were going to lose playing our style of basketball."
Mater Dei could not miss in the first half leading 35-24 at the break while connecting at a 66.7% clip (16-of-24) with many nearly uncontested looks due to the huge size advantage of the Mater Dei roster. Reinhardt (6-5) led the way with 12 first half points, while Xavier Johnson, a 6-7 junior wing, had eight points in the first half - the pair of bigs were nearly unguardable with the 6-4 Dunning and 6-4 Chad Taylor the tallest members on the Centennial roster.
Reinhardt led Mater Dei with 22 points, Stalzer had 16 and Johnson 11, but in the end, Centennial's speed turned out to be too much for Mater Dei's size.
