PASADENA — The Chino Hills High School boys basketball team used an 11-1 run at the start of the fourth quarter to pull away from Pasadena and post a 73-63 win in the quarterfinals of the Rose City Classic on Wednesday night at Maranatha High.
The Huskies (2-0) got double-figure performances from four players and that was enough to trump Pasadena (1-1) standout Ajon Efferson’s game-high 33 points and advance to play Sylmar in Friday’s semifinals.
“We’ll take it, you know, it wasn’t pretty,” Huskies head coach Steve Baik said. “I think we’re not close to playing the defense that we want to play yet. We’ll do some decent things in glimpses, but we’re not as consistent as we need to be.
“Obviously, Efferson is a heckuva one-on-one player, but we’ve got to do a better job.”
Wednesday’s game was billed as a battle of Efferson, a senior who transferred back to Pasadena in the offseason after spending last year at Serra, and Chino Hills sophomore guard Lonzo Ball.
Both are considered to be among the top guards in the Southland. And while Efferson did his thing, he didn’t have much of a supporting cast in the scoring department.
Efferson caught fire toward the end of the third quarter and helped the Bulldogs erase a double-digit deficit. Pasadena got to within 53-48 late in the third and trailed 56-48 to start the fourth quarter.
Chino Hills scored the first eight points of the quarter after Bishop Mency sunk a 3-pointer to spark his team on its opening possession of the final period. Mency finished with a team-high 16 points for Chino Hills.
