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Santa Margarita players after last weekend’s final game in the Section 7 tournament in Arizona. (Photo courtesy Santa Margarita basketball).
Santa Margarita’s boys basketball team had a productive weekend at the prestigious Section 7 tournament in Arizona, winning three of four games.
“It was pretty solid and it was good growth for our team,” Eagles Coach Justin Bell said Tuesday.
Santa Margarita defeated Lincoln from San Diego, a team from South Florida and Damien during the event.
“It was good competition and good for our guys to compete and try to get better,” said Bell, who led the Eagles to a 21-9 overall record and 5-5 mark in the Trinity League last season.
“Really, it’s not about the wins and losses, it’s kind of learning who your team is going into next year, I think we learned some things about our team that we need to improve on. It was a good self-reflection coming out of it.”
The veterans, who Bell, will look for to lead the way, starred during the Arizona event.
“I was happy with what our returners did: Cameron McNamee, Ethan Rhee, Jonathan Moxie and Brayden Kyman, those guys played really well but Dallas Washington who was there last year, played really well this weekend also,” Bell said.
“It was also good for us because we saw some good contributors from our other guys too. It looks like we have some good depth which we’re happy about.”
The Arizona event was held as a showcase for college coaches.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to have a good amount of our guys being recruited,” Bell said. “For them, it’s a win-win, that’s what it’s all about, trying to get these guys to reach their goals and get to the next level.”
Bell and his players will be looking to build on last year’s success. The team notched a big home win over Mater Dei in Trinity League play. The Eagles lost to Los Alamitos 55-50 in the opening round of the CIF playoffs.
The Eagles were led by senior forward Rockwell Reynolds, a three-year starter and first team All-Trinity League player who is now at Northern Arizona.
But Bell is impressed with what he’s seen so far of this year’s team and the prospects for the coming season.
“They’ve been great and we have a good core nucleus back and some good guys who played a lot of minutes last year and some all-conference guys back, so that’s the goal is to keep moving and get some guys to step up and play some big roles,” he said.
Among the seniors on this year’s team will be 6-4 senior Tobias Averill, who is also coming off a big year.
“He’s a big rock for us and he’s back and he’s one of the leaders on our team and holds everybody accountable and we will be leaning on him a lot in a lot of different areas,” Bell said.
Bell said the Eagles know what they need to do heading into next season.
“We want to continue to improve every year and keep our program running at a high level, it’s never easy and you want to continue to get better and better and hopefully we can continue to do that,” he said.
“We have a lot of improvement to do in some areas. We really like our team. We have a cohesive team that really loves each other and they share the ball and it shows on the court.
“As always, the Trinity League is very competitive and there are a lot of good teams and a lot of good players, but ultimately we just have to worry about ourselves and continue to put our heads down and continue to work as hard as we can and the results will kind of take care of themselves.”
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
