ORANGE COUNTY PREP BASKETBALL : South Coast League : Cougars Defeat Diablos Again

Scott McCullough did not quite make 50% of his shots Friday night, but the ones he missed, Capistrano Valley High School could manage without.

McCullough finished with 30 points, making 10 of 21 shots--a good portion of them from a distance where 35% is respectable--as he led the Cougars into first place in the South Coast League with a 60-58 victory in front of 1,250 at El Toro.

And perhaps his best shot, a spectacular heave that glanced off the glass into the basket as he fell to the floor 15 feet down the baseline, didn’t count. An official ruled that a foul occurred before he shot.

“This doesn’t put us in the driver’s seat, but it does put us in the front seat,” said Capistrano Valley Coach Mark Thornton, whose team is alone in first place with a 5-1 South Coast League record. The Cougars are 14-7 overall.

El Toro is 4-2 in league and 14-8 overall.

The Cougars won the teams’ first meeting this year, 58-47, at home.

Capistrano Valley led by six with 14 seconds to go, but the Chargers cut it to four with one basket and scored the final basket on an uncontested shot.

The score was tied, 52-52, with 2:45 to play, after Eric Speaker hit an 18-foot jump shot.

But then McCullough made one of his few shots from within 15 feet, driving for a bank shot and giving the Cougars a two-point lead. Capistrano Valley went to a delay game and made six foul shots down the stretch--McCullough made four and Charles Lockard added two--to win.

“McCullough shot the lights out tonight,” Thornton said.

El Toro’s last chances disappeared when Bret Johnson, a Charger guard who had been averaging 18.8 points a game, was called for an offensive foul as he drove for a basket that would have cut the lead to two with 22 seconds left.

Johnson finished with only four points.

Early on, it looked as if would be all El Toro. The Chargers jumped out to a 10-point lead in the first quarter as Speaker scored 10 points, missing just one field-goal attempt. But Speaker cooled off after the first quarter, finishing with a team-high 22.

Capistrano outscored El Toro by 12 points in the second quarter, though, taking a 33-30 halftime lead.

Besides McCullough’s shooting, the Cougars won it by closing down Cory Wayland, El Toro’s 6-foot 5-inch, 220-pound senior. Capistrano Valley used a zone, packing it in on Wayland, and it worked.

Wayland finished with 16 points, but he didn’t get his first field goal until midway through the fourth quarter. At halftime, he had but three points, all on foul shots.

“The first time we played El Toro, we had to stop Wayland, and we did it again,” Thornton said. “We had two people on him every time he touched the ball.”

El Toro used the fast break as they jumped out to a big lead early, but the hot shooting the Chargers had in the first quarter disappeared later in the game.

“We were not going to be as cold as we were in the first quarter the whole game,” Thornton said. “And they were not going to be that hot.”

Todd Marinovich, who finished with six points twice made big baskets for the Cougars in the fourth quarter, hitting a jump shot to give Capistrano Valley a two-point lead with seven minutes to go and making another to go ahead by three with 3:30 to play.

“We started penetrating that zone and reading the defense later in the game,” Thornton said. “We were able to kick it off to our big guys.

“I just hope we play continue to play like we did tonight.”

Mission Viejo 65, San Clemente 52--Senior forward Matt Lackie made 8 of 10 shots and scored 18 points to lead the Diablos to the victory at Mission Viejo (4-2, 15-5). Diablo center David Hall broke his leg in the first quarter while trying to block a shot.

The Diablos two leading scorers, Jeff Herdman and Greg Matthews, were both held to 10 points. San Clemente was by Mike Peters, who scored 14 points.