SoCalHoops High School News

CIF-SS Finals:  Division V-A
Preview Of Price v. Heritage--(Mar. 3, 2000)

Who: No. 1 Price High (29-1)  v. No. 2 Heritage Christian (24-4)
Where:  Loyola Marymount University
What: CIF Southern Section Division V-A Championship
Time:  4:45 p.m.
Date:  March 3, 2000

As we suspected all along, the finals in this Division has come down to Price v. Heritage Christian, the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, respectively.  Price is the defending state champion, and Heritage Christian, is. . . well, they're new at this Section finals stuff and they're even having trouble deciding what to call themselves. . . is it "Heritage Christian" or is it "Eastside Christian".   No matter where they're from the Patriots figure to give the Knights a game. 

Price hasn't hidden from anyone this year.   Despite the relative weakness of their new International League, Price has played teams from mostly larger divisions, and they've beaten everyone except for Pasadena Marshall, a three point loss. The Knights have beaten Kilpatrick 67-38, (D-IV), Cathedral 86-33 (D-IV), Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 59-51(D-III), Montclair Prep 70-66 (V-AA), Brethren Christan 80-50 (IV), Norwalk 107-27(II), Calvary Chapel Downey (D-VAA finalist) 79-61, San Pedro (D-4A, City Section) 104-36, St. Anthony 75-53, Windward (V-AA) 107-31, Orange Lutheran (D-IV)  69-48, Milken 78-46 (DIV-A semifinalist), Serra 84-67 (D-IV-AA finalist), and they cruised through league, beating up on teams by an average of 50 points or more.

Heritage has, for the most part, played smallish Division V-AA and V-A teams for most of the season; where they've played higher division teams, they've had mixed success.  The Patriots lost their first game of the year to St. Bernard 72-82; they lost to Anaheim 57-74, but they did beat Mary Star 63-53, but also lost to El Segundo 62-74.  They swept through league, beating teams by an average of about 20 points, but then had trouble with Roling Hils Prep, beating them by just two points 36-34.

Heres' a look at the two teams' rosters:

On paper these two teams appear to matchup pretty well, and in fact they will also matchup well in reality.  Price is probably the more athletic team, featuring six players who averaged in double-digits throughout the season, including all  their starters: Chris Alexander 11 ppg, Jermain Jamison 14 ppg, Mychal Lynch 15 ppg, Andre Jones 12 ppg and Othell Johnson 13 ppg.  Andrew Howard averaged 14 ppg off the bench.  Price is a team which likes to run the break and they've been killing teams all year long by running, gunning and pushing the pace of games.  Heritage has athletes too, but they probably don't want to get caught in a running game with the Knights.  Three Patriots have been averaging double figures all season, including Ryan Meyer with 14.1 ppg, Jason Grier at 18.1 ppg and Matt Winter at 18.4 ppg.

We know that Heritage is just happy to be there.  We spoke with Heritage head coach Mark Berokoff, and he's really looking forward to the game, and to Heritage's participation next week in the State Regional tournament (yes, both teams get to continue their seasons into at least the first round of the State Southern Regionals).   Berokoff told us, "Yes, I know that a lot of people discount our chances, but our guys are tough, and we've been playing very well lately.  We escaped with our lives in Antelope Valley, but we think we'll do well against a team like Price if we can slow them down."   And Berokoff has the weapons to do it, with two of Orange County's leading scoring threats in Grier and Winter.  

Price of course counters with speed, speed and more speed, and they'll look to turn this game into a track race, setting each other up for flying jams, and fast break opportunities.  Price can play smothering full court pressure defense, and they've beaten a lot of bigger, older and seemingly better teams just this way. While they had trouble against a team like Pasadena Marshall at the Rose City Rumble on January 17 over the MLK weekend, Heritage is a team that could cause them trouble with complex offensive sets, back door picks and outside shooting.

This one promises to be a fun way to start the finals weekend.  We'll be there so that we don't have to rely on traditional media sources to ignore Price any longer.  Remember, the game starts early, at 4:45 p.m. so if you're planning to attend remember traffic in and around LAX can be horrible on Friday afternoon, so leave early.

See you there. 

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