Poway Makes Rematch a Mismatch

SAN DIEGO —  Wednesday night’s San Diego Section 3-A championship basketball game turned out to be more of a repeat performance than a rematch.

Poway High defended its title with a resounding 87-63 win over Morse at the San Diego Sports Arena. The Titans (24-1) defeated Morse, 89-51, early in the season.

The Titans will advance to the Southern California regional against the 4-A champion from Los Angeles. They will face either Crenshaw or Manual Arts at Mira Mesa High School on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

Coming into Wednesday night’s game, Poway was ranked as San Diego County’s top team.

It didn’t take long for the Titans to show the crowd of 7,618 fans that they deserved their ranking.

Forward Dominick Johnson scored seven points and Jud Buechler added a jump shot to give the Titans a 9-0 lead after three minutes of play.

The tone for the game was set.

Morse (15-7) upset Monte Vista and Patrick Henry to reach the championship game, but its dream died early against a balanced, intelligent, physical Poway team.

As has been their pattern throughout the last two seasons, the Titans relied almost exclusively on their starting five.

And has been their trademark, the Titans got plenty of scoring. Johnson scored 23 points, John Colborne and Buechler had 20 each, Andy Byrne added 12 and Gary Anderson had 8.

Playing without Chris Jeter, their 6-foot 10-inch starting center who was sidelined with an ankle injury, Morse had as much trouble offensively as it did defensively.

Morse did not score its first point until Paul Bryant hit a free throw at the 4:01 mark of the first quarter. Bryant, the Tigers’ leading scorer, was hounded by Buechler in Poway’s aggressive diamond-and-one defense. Bryant had just 9 of his team-high 23 points in the first half.

Poway led 21-8 after one quarter. The Titans outscored the Tigers, 10-2, at the outset of the second quarter, and extended their lead to 43-19 at halftime.

The Titans repeatedly broke Morse’s press to score easy lay ups.

“If we handled the ball well and forced them to play a half court game,” Poway Coach Neville Saner said, “I thought we’d be able to control the tempo.”

Was he ever right.

After jumping out to a big lead, the Titans never allowed the Tigers to get back into the game. In a heated and physical second half, Morse got within 19 points on one occasion.

At that point, a Morse assistant coach told his players: “We’re back in it.”