By Matthew Schuler<\/p>\n
(San Gabriel)-Gabrielino used big first and fourth quarter spurts to squeeze by South El Monte, 43-39 Friday night in front of a home crowd to push its way into a three-way tie for first place in the Mission Valley League title race.<\/p>\n
With 21.9 seconds left to play in the game, Villela Jordan sank two out of three free throws to climb to a 41-39 deficit, but Gabrielino\u2019s leading scorer on the season, Ryan Lam, got fouled and iced back-to-back critical free throws to make it a two possession game with less than 15 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n
Oscar Nava’s following 3-point attempt failed and Gabrielino held on for another home victory and 6-2 league record.<\/p>\n
The win creates a three way knot as Mountain View and Arroyo also won their games, giving all three teams a 6-2 league records and a momentary share of the top title spot in the MVL.<\/p>\n
Lam hit six clutch free throws, all coming in the fourth quarter. Chris Duarte added eight points, scoring six early in the second to help attain a 4-point advantage\u00a0 by half, and Aron Castrellon and Tyler Shimamoto added five a piece for Gabby.<\/p>\n
South El Monte trailed for most of the night and it was 14-10 after the first quarter ended.<\/p>\n
Ray Nativad led South El Monte and all scorers with 13 points, including two threes from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
Mountain View got revenge on El Monte (41-31) and Arroyo scored a victory over Rosemead (46-37) to turn the Mission Valley League race into a dog fight.<\/p>\n
During the fourth quarter Shimamoto raced down court and drove to the basket hard, dribbling the ball behind his back and converting a lay up in one motion. Shimamoto then followed it up with another coast to coast lay in to force South Coach Robert Burgess, to take a time out after capturing their biggest lead (37-29) with 2:37 left in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Even though the win grants them a share for the top spot, Gabrielino coach John Carney was looking at the turnovers and sloppy play that continues to occur throughout the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not happy about it,\u201d said Carney when asked about the victory. \u201cAt this point of the season we should be playing better\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Eagles of Gabby have only two remaining games to keep their share of the league title, playing El Monte Wednesday and Arroyo Friday.<\/p>\n
South drops to 4-4 in league and finishes up against Arroyo and Mountain View.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Matthew Schuler (San Gabriel)-Gabrielino used big first and fourth quarter spurts to squeeze by South El Monte, 43-39 Friday night in front of a home crowd to push its way into a three-way tie for first place in the Mission Valley League title race.<\/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":[4477,1679,374,4476,4478,1518,4204,4447,4475],"class_list":["post-14614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-aron-castrellon","tag-chris-duarte","tag-john-carney","tag-oscar-navas","tag-ray-natividad","tag-robert-burgess","tag-ryan-lam","tag-tyler-shimamoto","tag-villela-jordan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14614","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=14614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14615,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14614\/revisions\/14615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}