Boys’ Basketball: Sailors upset Edison
All Newport Harbor High could do is look back and say, “What if we had won on Tuesday?”
The big “What if?” was the Marina game. They prevail on the road that night, and two nights later, the Sailors are all alone in second place in the Sunset League for the first time in eight years.
Newport Harbor would be celebrating as the runner-up finisher. Instead, the Sailors shared second place with the team they stunned on Thursday.
Newport Harbor defeated Edison, 61-51, at home, ending a 15-game losing streak to the Chargers.
All the excitement died down 20 minutes after Newport Harbor beat Edison for the first time since 2007-08. Since the two programs split the two-game series this season, a coin flip determined the league’s No. 2 entry into the CIF Southern Section Division 2AA playoffs.
The toss took place inside Newport Harbor Coach Bob Torribio’s office, right next door to his team’s locker room. Rick Pembrook, Newport Harbor’s assistant principal, flipped a quarter, and in mid-air, Edison Coach Rich Boyce called it first.
“Tails,” Boyce said.
The Chargers (20-7, 6-4 in league) didn’t win the regular-season finale, but they won the coin flip. And that’s huge because Edison, ranked No. 2 in the Division 2AA poll, will most likely a earn a first-round playoff game at home, while the No. 8 Sailors (21-7, 6-4) might have to hit the road.
“We still would’ve been a high seed. We’ll probably be a No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3, maybe we drop to No. 4,” Boyce said, referring to the playoff pairings, which the section will release on Sunday. “But, yeah, it would’ve hurt us [if we would’ve lost the coin flip], in the fact that we probably would’ve been on the road.”
The news of Edison winning the flip put a little dagger in the Sailors’ evening. They were the ones who took the game to Edison, jumping to a 16-3 first-quarter lead, and then held off the Chargers the rest of the way.
Charlie Stassel led Newport Harbor with 19 points and Collin Pipkin finished with 18 points and five rebounds. Nate Harding added 11 points and 10 rebounds.
The three players came through in the fourth quarter. Stassel scored eight points and knocked down two three-point shots, while Harding had five points, including a three-point play, and Pipkin produced four points.
Each time Edison cut the deficit to five in the fourth quarter, there was Harding driving to the basket and making a left-handed shot while Edison fouled him with 2:12 to go, or Harding finding a wide-open Brandon Phillips for a layup 29 seconds later.
Stassel put the game away with his third three-pointer. Pipkin passed the ball to the right, where Stassel gave Newport Harbor a 55-45 lead with 72 seconds left.
Harding came up with a steal on the ensuing possession, and Edison fouled Pipkin, sending him to the free-throw line for a one-and-one situation. The junior point guard converted both foul shots and he and the Sailors were 59 seconds away from mobbing each other on the court.
The next time the Sailors play might not be at home.
“If we’re away [in the first round],” Stassel said, “we got to [come] out firing and come out like we did tonight, and we’ll be good.”
The Sailors began on fire, and Stassel, a senior guard, was a big reason why.
Stassel’s two layups accounted for half of the game’s first eight points, all belonging to Newport Harbor. The crowd then went wild with about 1½ minutes left in the opening quarter, when Stassel dunked on a fastbreak to put Newport Harbor up, 16-3.
The first eight minutes were ones the Chargers would rather forget. They made only one of 13 fields goals in the first quarter, missing each of their five three-pointers, and they only made one of four free throws, along with turning the ball over seven times.
The second quarter saw Edison make seven of 13 shots, but Newport Harbor played pretty much even, taking a 31-20 lead into halftime. The third quarter was a different story.
The Chargers went on a 10-2 run at the start of the second half. Randall Walker scored six of the points, finishing with 18, and Nate Matthews had four of his 16 points during the stretch. Edison trimmed the Sailors’ lead to 33-30 with 2:45 left in the third quarter.
At that point, Newport Harbor’s two points came on one free throw by Harding and Pipkin. The Sailors couldn’t really hit a shot. They misfired on their first 11 attempts in the third quarter, and it wasn’t until Stassel’s layup at the 1:32 mark that the Sailors made a basket.
Then Newport Harbor wound up getting consecutive successful shots, the other was a Pipkin layup off a steal. He added a three-pointer to beat the buzzer, extending the Sailors’ lead to 40-30.
The last seven points in the third went to the Sailors. The hosts were a quarter away from moving into a tie for second, and then another quarter, in the form of change, from finding out the Chargers, not the Sailors, were the league’s No. 2 representative in the postseason.
“That’s tough,” Harding said. “We had a bad game [at Marina that we lost, 50-39]. But I’m glad we could just bounce back. Either way, coin flip or not, it’s momentum going into playoffs and we need that.”
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Sunset League
Newport Harbor 61, Edison 51
SCORE BY QUARTERS
Edison 3 – 17 – 10 – 21 — 51
Newport 16 – 15 – 9 – 21— 61
E – Walker 18, Matthews 16, Atencio 7, Barlow 4, White 3, Barton 3.
3-pt. goals – Walker 2, Matthews 1, Atencio 1, Barton 1.
Fouled out – White.
Technicals – Coach.
NH – Stassel 19, Pipkin 18, Harding 11, B. Phillips 6, Blaine 5, Laidlaw 2.
3-pt. goals – Stassel 3, Pipkin 1, Blaine 1.
Fouled out – None.
Technicals – None.
