By Matt Schuler<\/p>\n
(Covina) \u2013 The Bonita Bearcats looked great with their passing, caused turnovers with their defense, were active on the boards, and accurate with their shooting.<\/p>\n
The Bearcats (12-2) simply played a lot harder and faster pace then Bishop Amat (11-3) on the way to an easy 64-37 victory in the semi-final round of the Covina Christmas Tournament Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
The tandem of guards Jordan Butler and James Northup once again proved to be the catalyst of a strong Bonita team, which faces off with Chino Hills today at 8:30pm for the tournament championship.<\/p>\n
Butler finished with 16 points and 5 assists, including four out of five from 3-point range to keep the Bearcats hot from beyond the arc. Northup collected 19 points, 2 steals, and combined the duo tallied 34-points and seven assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were both scorching hot,\u201d said Coach Greg Eckler. \u201cThe fact that they can shoot it, make great assists, and take care of the ball and they had very few turnovers for us today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bishop Amat leading scorer Daniel Rodriguez finished with 15 points, which is under his average of nearly 20 points per game, getting his points beyond the arc and at the charity stripe. The stringent zone defense of Bonita bothered Rodriguez\u2019s every move when in the paint.<\/p>\n
The score was 10-9 after one quarter with Bishop rallying to a one point deficit, but the Lancers only managed two buckets in the second quarter and were out scored 20-4 to propel the Bearcats a 30-13 halftime lead.<\/p>\n
As a team Bonita racked up over 15 assists, but coach Eckler credited the teams hustle play as a big factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the key,\u201d said Eckler \u201c(I was) very disappointed in our intensity, and our fire, and our passion yesterday. That was what we really talked about in shoot around. Our focus and the will to compete, and today we had it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bonita now gets ready for final round of the tournament against Chino Hills.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no how idea how we\u2019re going to do it,\u201d Eckler said in response to his teams\u2019 odds. \u201cThey\u2018re incredibly athletic and for the last couple of years that is what has really given us trouble is their athleticism and their size.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Huskies defeated Rowland 61-53 in their semi-final match to advance to tonight\u2019s winner take all match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Matt Schuler (Covina) \u2013 The Bonita Bearcats looked great with their passing, caused turnovers with their defense, were active on the boards, and accurate with their shooting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1599,4267,4266,4265],"class_list":["post-13871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-daniel-rodriguez","tag-greg-eckler","tag-james-northrup","tag-jordan-butler"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13871"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13874,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13871\/revisions\/13874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}