Antelope Valley Brings Home 69-53 Victory

There’s no place like home.

Especially for the Antelope Valley High basketball team, which has spent so much time on the road this season the Antelopes were beginning to click the heels of their hightops and sing about rainbows and yellow brick roads.

“I was beginning to feel like Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ” Coach Skip Adams said. “I wanted to go home.”

Home is where the Antelopes like to play. It’s where they lost just one game all of last season. And where they had played just one game this season before Friday night’s Golden League opener against Canyon.

And it’s also where the fired-up Antelopes (13-3 overall) defeated Canyon, 69-53, before a packed gym that cheered the defending league champs for the first time in three weeks.

“Our road record was good and that will make us road-tough (for the playoffs),” Adams said. “But we’ve been struggling with our outside shooting. I wished that tonight we would finally get hot.”

It doesn’t take a wizard to realize that when the weather cools off in the high desert, Antelope Valley’s shooting heats up.

The Antelopes made 28 of 50 shots from the field, including eight of 11 in the third quarter when they outscored Canyon, 19-9, to turn a close game into a 56-38 advantage.

The Antelopes also buried eight of 12 three-point shots, including four by guard B. J. Petersen (14 points) and three by reserve guard Bobby Paiz (11).

Antelope Valley led, 19-17, after one quarter, but outscored the Cowboys, 18-12, in the second quarter to take a 37-29 halftime lead.

Petersen, guard Brock Chase and Paiz hit consecutive three-point shots to open the second quarter. Paiz connected on two consecutive three-point baskets to open the second half.

“Now that we came back home, we’re better in our shooting,” Chase said.

Said senior forward Chris Walters, who penetrated Canyon’s defense for a game-high 15 points: “It gives everybody a chance to see us instead of just reading about us in the newspapers. The crowd starts cheering for us and the guys start getting a lot of open shots.”

Canyon Coach Greg Hayes, whose team dropped to 11-4, reasoned that the game would have gone Antelope Valley’s way in any venue--even in Kansas.

“It wasn’t the arena, they just outhustled us,” Hayes said. “In the third quarter they just killed us. We weren’t in the game.”

Senior forward Jermaine Nixon led Canyon with 13 points but scored only four in the fourth quarter while the Cowboys tried to play catchup.