Portola players head to the sidelines during a timeout after an early scoring run Monday. (PHOTOS: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
Portola’s boys basketball team took command early and went on to capture a 79-69 non-league victory over California from Whittier Monday evening at Portola.
Portola (8-5) jumped out to a 12-4 lead in the opening minutes of the first quarter and led 27-17 after the opening stanza.
The Bulldogs had a balanced scoring attack, led by senior guard Gavin Nguyen, who had 17 points. Ryan Novak (14 points), Steve Yang (13 points), Max Paulsen (12 points) and Lucas Ip (11 points) also contributed offensively.
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Portola made eight of its nine 3-pointers in the first half, three by Ip to move out to a 50-35 lead at halftime.
The Bulldogs were coming off a 69-57 loss to Beckman Saturday.
“Better than what we had on Saturday, and I have a lot of respect for the way they play, California is a tough team, they dictate the pace in every game, they like to play fast, we like to do that too, we just haven’t recently,” said Portola Coach Brian Smith.
“I knew they had a lot of success last year and coming in this year, it is a very well coached, well-run program, so I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of team we were going to have today because we didn’t play as good as I thought we could have played on Saturday against Beckman. But we finally came in, we haven’t had any home games in a while, love the way our guys came out in the first quarter with a lot of energy and set the tone for us.”
Smith was pleased so see the 3-pointers fall.
“That’s one of the things our guys like to do is hit three’s,” Smith said. “When we’re not hitting three’s, we have to figure out other ways to score. We were fortunate to hit some today.”
Nguyen said the Bulldogs came out inspired after Saturday’s loss, which he said served as a “wakeup-call for us.”
“It was really good today coming out with the win against a good team knowing that they won CIF last year,” said Nguyen. “We came out really strong at the beginning, hit a lot of three’s, played really fast, like how we want to. We didn’t let them dictate what we do, we pushed the pace.”
California (9-6) was led by Aham Nwosu, who had 15 points and Jair Linares, who scored 14 points. Augie Gomez added 11 points for the Conros.
Portola led 69-45 after three quarters but the Condors kept battling and with a 17-4 run cut the Portola lead down to 11 points with 2:44 left before the Bulldogs sealed the win.
“They were eight for 18 in the first half on three’s,” said California Coach Joel Simonds, who led the Condors to the CIF 4A title last year. “They were prepared for our pressure defense, they got out of trouble and found the open guy, they were hot, that’s a good team.
“We try to do certain things defensively and create chaos and havoc and we didn’t do that in the first half. We did late in the third and into the fourth quarter we did a decent job, but we have to be true to who we are. If we’re true to who we are and do the things that have given us sucess, I like our ability.”
Nine players returned from last year’s CIF championship team, but two players have been out with injuries, one player has been out ill and another quit during the summer, Simonds said.
“What I thought was going to be nine returners, ended up being five,” he said. “Everybody is dealing with the same thing, trying to piece it together.”
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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