By Matt Schuler<\/p>\n
(La Verne)- The gym was filled to capacity and the atmosphere was fitting for a rivalry as Damien edged out cross town neighbor Bonita \u00a052-44 Tuesday night\u00a0 in an\u00a0elimination match on their home court.<\/p>\n
The Spartans advanced to the CIF Southern Section Semi Finals on Tuesday night for the second consecutive season.<\/p>\n
J.J Pavia scored 10 points, Gian Demano and Clayton White both added nine, but defense is what really lifted the Spartans attack.<\/p>\n
Chris Reyes, a 6\u20197 junior, protected the rim with authority all night and finished with eight blocked shots and eight rebounds, to add to his 6 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just like to play defense\u201d said Reyes. \u201cI don\u2019t look to score.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading by two late in the fourth, 46-44, Damien\u2019s White threw up a running floater that bounced off the rim, but Reyes was right there for the put back to extend the lead to 48-44 with 55 seconds remaining in the final quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all made some good shots,\u201d said Damien coach Matt Dunn after the quarter final victory. \u201cWhat a great atmosphere – two really, really good teams, and we were lucky to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bearcats Jordan Butler led all scorers with 15 points, James Northup added 10, but it wasn\u2019t enough as their season finished at 26-4.<\/p>\n
Garrett Horine finished with eight points and six boards for Bonita.<\/p>\n
This match up in the quarter finals was the ninth meeting between these two teams since the 2004 season and officially can be called a rivalry.<\/p>\n
Damien now travels to play top seeded Harvard Westlake, which beat Cerritos 73-58 to advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Matt Schuler (La Verne)- The gym was filled to capacity and the atmosphere was fitting for a rivalry as Damien edged out cross town neighbor Bonita \u00a052-44 Tuesday night\u00a0 in an\u00a0elimination match on their home court.<\/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":[4205,4422,3045,4404,4265,4581],"class_list":["post-15075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-chris-reyes","tag-clayton-white","tag-garrett-horine","tag-gian-demano","tag-jordan-butler","tag-matt-dunn"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15075","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=15075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15076,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15075\/revisions\/15076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}