The Aragon boys basketball team used a swarming defense and balanced scoring attack to defeat Gunderson, 71-48, in the championship of the Monta Vista Tournament Saturday night in Cupertino. The Dons (9-3) scored on a 3-pointer by junior point guard Alex Manu just four seconds into the game and never trailed against the Grizzlies (4-5).
Aragon utilized a pressure defense to hound Gunderson both in the full court and half court. The Grizzlies did not score their first goal until four seconds remained in the first quarter on a driving layup by Ryan Tran (game-high 18 points).
"For us this is a good tournament with Harker, which was really tough and was really a good game for us," Aragon coach Sam Manu said. "We needed to toughen up, so I'm really thankful for that."
The Dons raced out to an 18-2 lead and finished the first quarter up 20-5. The lead never shrunk below double digits the rest of the way.
Down 52-26 at the end of the third period, the Grizzlies opened the fourth quarter with a 12-0 against the Aragon reserves to cut the lead to 52-38. But a 3-pointer by Nick Frankel (16 points, including 4 3-pointers) restored order as the Dons answered with a quick 12-5 run to push the lead back up to 64-43.
"It's a great blessing for us because we let kids who may not usually play a lot of games get in; nothing's worse than coming to practice for three hours, studying for finals, and not seeing much time," Manu said. "This is really important for us because you can't have a team that improves if the practice players don't feel like they're appreciated."
Trevor Lahoz added 10 points for Aragon as 12 different Dons scored. Mohamed Ali, who did not play in the first half, added 14 points for Gunderson, which opens BVAL-Santa Teresa play January 2 against Pioneer. The Dons begin play in the PAL-South Division January 9 at Woodside.
In other action at the Monta Vista Tournament, Eric Holt scored 14 points as Harker defeated Tennyson, 68-28, to capture third place.
"I think we've learned that preparation is more important. We're a young team. We have three sophomores that start and we just didn't compare correctly for last night and that could be the coaches' fault as well," said Harker coach Butch Keller, referring to a loss to Aragon in the semifinals Friday. "But we had a group of seniors that came at us and we responded as sophomores so I feel that what we've learned from this tournament is that preparation is really key."
Also, Ramana Keerthi scored 15 points and David Lai added 10 as host Monta Vista knocked off Silver Creek, 42-35, in consolation play.
