Boys’ Basketball: CdM moving on to semifinals

LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE — From a house in the hills in La Cañada Flintridge, the Corona del Mar High boys’ basketball team first caught a bird’s eye view of the campus of its next opponent. The Sea Kings stopped by the place of Kevin Fults’ grandma before making the five-minute drive from her house down to their game at La Cañada on Tuesday.

Linda Fults provided the hospitality, making the Sea Kings feel at home, even though they were 58 miles away from school. The road trip to play at La Cañada in the quarterfinals of the CIF Southern Section Division 3A playoffs felt nothing like one for CdM. Players lounged around, played games, ate lunch, and studied.

The Sea Kings definitely did their homework on La Cañada, and Fults’ grandmother presented it in the form of family. Two of her sons, Eric, who’s Fults’ dad, and David, went to La Cañada and played for the school. David, Fults’ uncle, suited up for La Cañada’s current coach, Tom Hofman, way before Hofman reached the 600-win plateau this season.

David was a member of Hofman’s first section championship team at La Cañada 23 seasons ago. David returned to his alma mater to watch his nephew prevent his old coach from winning another crown.

Fults kept CdM’s title hopes alive, finishing with a game-high 14 points, to go with eight rebounds and two steals to lead the No. 2-seeded Sea Kings to a 52-44 win and the semifinals. The Sea Kings are one win away from their first section finals appearance in eight seasons.

Grandma Fults will have to travel to see whether her grandson and his teammates can advance to the championship. The Sea Kings hope she can make it to CdM (23-6) on Friday, when it plays host to No. 3 Tahquitz (25-4) at 7 p.m.

Setting up shop at grandma Fults’ house played a role in CdM edging No. 7 La Cañada (22-7). Just ask her grandson.

“It was good to have a place to like kind of settle down before we came,” Fults said. “It’s good to get the team together and we can all bond. It’s really crucial before a game.

“I knew I wanted to put on a good game coming back here [where my dad and uncle played]. It’s a fun environment. You look for those games in the [quarterfinals] to really push you to that next step. We have bigger goals in mind, [getting to] the semis and finals.”

Fults, a senior, has CdM in the semifinals for the second time in three seasons. The team made it this far again because Fults, Sam Kobrine and Matt Ctvrtlik carried the offense in the first half, combining for 25 of CdM’s 35 points, and the three also came up with baskets in the fourth quarter.

The Sea Kings began the final quarter with a 45-35 lead and with Fults taking the team’s first shot in a quarter for the fourth straight time. Fults missed a layup, but when Sean Estes hit a three and Daivon Grayson knocked down a jumper to cut CdM’s lead in half with seven minutes to go, Fults answered with a jumper in the paint.

Then with 5:17 left, Koko Kurdoghlian’s layup made it a two-possession game. The Spartans trailed, 48-42, but CdM stopped them from getting closer in the next two minutes. The Spartans never had the ball to get a shot off during the stretch.

The Sea Kings ate up that much time. Two fouls on La Cañada gave CdM two new 35-second shot clocks to work with, and the visiting team earned another one when Ctvrtlik grabbed an offensive rebound near the baseline. With Ctvrtlik in the air and falling out of bounds, he asked for a timeout. And he got it with 3:44 left.

“He doesn’t get rattled,” CdM Coach Ryan Schachter said of Ctvrtlik, a junior who came off the bench and produced 12 points on five-for-seven shooting. “That timeout was so heady. We don’t use a lot of timeouts. We got to use another [27] seconds off the clock.”

In the playoffs, especially down the stretch, every possession counts. Ctvrtlik gave CdM a fourth straight possession, and then an eight-point lead. Ctvrtlik’s left-handed hook shot put the Sea Kings up, 50-42 with 3:17 remaining.

Fourteen seconds later, Grayson drained a jumper, giving him 11 points. Those points would be the last scored by La Cañada, which missed its last five shots. The Sea Kings’ size with 6-foot-7 Ryan Moss, 6-4 Ctvrtlik and 6-3 Fults and defense with Ryan Stone, Bo St. Geme and Kobrine created problems for the three-point happy shooting Spartans, who made six of 18 from behind the arc.

Grayson tried to get another two for La Cañada on a drive with 1 1/2 minutes left, but Kobrine blocked his shot.

Kobrine sealed the game when St. Geme, a point guard, drove toward the baseline and found Kobrine for an easy layup to give CdM a 52-44 lead. Kobrine finished with 11 points.

“I’m so proud of our guys,” Schachter said. “That’s a good [La Cañada] team, a very good team, and [the Spartans are] scary because they can score. I do not want to play them next year. They return all five starters. I thought our guys did a great job of just keeping their composure. Their crowd was loud. I guess I thought I could yell over the crowd, but I couldn’t.”

Grandma Fults warned Schachter about how hostile the La Cañada gym can be. But she assured Schachter about one thing before the game.

“The grandma told me that any of her friends that are going to hang out with her [at the game] have to root for Kevin,” Schachter said. “They were rooting for her grandson.”

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CIF Southern Section Division 3A playoffs

Quarterfinals

Corona del Mar 52, La Cañada 44

SCORE BY QUARTERS

CdM 11 – 24 – 10 – 7 — 52

La Cañada 9 – 20 – 6 – 9 — 44

CdM – Fults 14, Ctvrtlik 12, Kobrine 11, Ridge 6, Stone 5, Moss 2, St. Geme 2.

3-pt. goals – Kobrine 1, Ridge 1.

Fouled out – None.

Technicals – None.

LC – Kurdoghlian 13, Grayson 11, Arthur 11, Estes 5, Choi 4.

3-pt. goals – Arthur 3, Kurdoghlian 1, Grayson 1, Estes 1.

Fouled out – None.

Technicals – None.