MURRIETA — Chris Featherly considers his Murrieta Mesa boys basketball squad to be a really good offensive team.
Tuesday night, in a CIF Southern Section Division 3 quarterfinal game against Ontario Christian, that offense that averaged 79.5 points per game in their first two playoff contests, was held mostly in check. And Featherly was interested to see how his team would respond.
After giving up a 15-2 third quarter run that allowed Ontario Christian to take a 38-36 lead, the Rams buckled down and gave up just 12 points over the next 11 minutes to pull away and win 64-50.
Murrieta Mesa advances to their first semifinal in program history on Friday at Warren, a 56-53 winner at Golden Valley. the Rams (21-10) also earned a berth in the CIF State tournament.
Damian Ruiz and Jagger Saul each had 15 points for Murrieta Mesa in the win, while Heaven Chea led Ontario Christian with a game-high 21 points.
“I saw five full games of Ontario Christian’s in preparing for this one, and they might not be the biggest team but they cover a lot of court and really made things tough for us offensively,” Featherly said. “Once we settled down we were able to find some good shots and defend well enough to get by tonight. I think we’ve played in some pretty tough road venues this year and hopefully that experience will take us to a win on Friday night.”
Murrieta Mesa led 15-13 after a quarter, as Luke Siefkin got by the Knights’ defense for a layup at the first-period buzzer.
Ontario Christian (21-9) scored the first five points of the second quarter on a stepback 3-pointer from Mason Salazar and a layup by Max Steen to take an 18-15 lead with 6:29 left until intermission. The answer from Murrieta Mesa was an 11-0 run covering 3:10 to take a 26-18 lead with 2:55 remaining. Ruiz scored five straight points in the run while Kian Hendricks, Ray Riley, and Carlito Christian also made field goals in that stretch.
Christian’s layup with a minute left gave Mesa the game’s first double-digit lead before Cash Marshall’s layup cut the Ontario Christian deficit to nine points with a half left to play.
The Knights came out of halftime re-energized and went on the aforementioned run, forcing Featherly to burn a timeout after a 3-pointer by Chea with 3:22 left in the third.
Jagger Saul scored the next nine points, including a pair of 3-pointers, to put the Rams back in front 45-38 with 1:11 left in the third quarter. Ruiz connected on his third and final 3-pointer of the night from the left wing at the third-quarter buzzer to put Mesa up 48-38.
“Qualifying for state, to me, is pretty big because of the way our first-round game ended when I was at Temecula Valley as a freshman,” Ruiz said. “That being said, we’d love to be preparing for a section championship game next week, and in order to do that we just have to play Mesa basketball and stick together in what we know will be a really tough road environment on Friday night.”
Ontario Christian cut the deficit to nine points twice in the fourth quarter, but that late surge by Mesa in the third period was too much for the Knights to overcome.
“Well-coached teams are going to find ways to make their runs, and that’s exactly what Mesa did at the end of the third to take back control of this game,” Knights coach Mike Fischer said. “We returned two guys with significant varsity experience from last year, had a ton of young guys step up to get us here, and I couldn’t be prouder of the season we had.”
