BEAVERTON — As the game wore on, Mountainside's boys basketball team got stronger and stronger.
By the fourth quarter, the Mavericks were downright dominant.
Mountainside’s Mateo Zaporteza scored four of his game-high 13 points in the fourth quarter as the Mavericks pulled away from the Lakeridge Pacers for a 53-35 victory in Saturday’s championship final of the four-team Mountainside Holiday Classic tournament at Mountainside High School.
Eli Vizconde also finished in double figures with 11 points for Mountainside and Rogen Brown and Peyton Reyes chipped in nine points each for the Mavericks (2-2).
“We had a good tournament as a team,” Zaporteza said. “It was nice to get our first two wins. We just played together. And we need to keep that up for the rest of the season.”
Lakeridge’s Valentin Faucher scored a team-high 12 points, Sean McCarty added seven, and Jack Clarke was held to four points — all four coming at the free-throw line — for the Pacers (1-2).
“We had a good effort,” Lakeridge coach James Watts said. “We were right there where we wanted to be and then we couldn't get any buckets down the stretch.”
Mountainside played from in front almost the entire game, leading 14-6 at the end of the first quarter, 21-18 at halftime, and 34-32 at the end of the third quarter.
Then the Mavericks went on a 19-0 run to start the fourth quarter and ended up outscoring Lakeridge 19-3 in the period.
“It felt like a one-possession game the entire game,” Mountainside coach Dustin Hewitt said. “I stopped looking at the scoreboard, anticipating that we were going to have to execute down the stretch in a tight game.
“I looked up and we were up 15 and I didn’t even realize that we’d gone on a run like that. Just kind of locked into the game, I guess.”
Mountainside’s fourth-quarter surge started with a handful of defensive stops at one end and some well-executed offensive plays at the other end, including a Vizconde 3-pointer that gave the Mavericks a 44-32 lead with 4:24 to play.
Lakeridge tried to press, but the Pacers’ aggression led to a steady string of fouls and the Mavericks responded by making 10 of 14 free throws in the final 3:13 to put the game out of reach.
“I felt like our transition bugged Lakeridge a little bit,” Hewitt said. “That’s a huge team. They’re athletic. They’re strong. They’re aggressive. And they play really hard, so it was hard to clear defensive rebounds for us for a little bit.
“Once we started doing that in the second half, that helped our offense a little bit.”
Early in the game, Mountainside’s biggest challenge was trying to solve Lakeridge’s zone defense. The Mavericks steered clear of working the ball inside and trying to score over Clarke, the Pacer’s 6-foot-7 senior, and instead settled for a lot of shots from beyond the three-point arc.
“We kind of said, ‘Let’s see if we can’t shot ‘em out of their zone,” said Hewitt, whose team was coming off a 62-60 victory over Cleveland in Friday’s tourney opener. “That’s the first time I’ve coached against Lakeridge and not having a practice to prepare for it was a little tricky. We were kind of doing it on the fly.
“Coach Watts does a very good job with his zone. There’s not a lot of holes. Guys are covered. It did give us some problems, so I was a little nervous there, but we just kind of made shots when we needed to make shots.”
And it wasn’t one or two guys making shots. Zaporteza knocked down a pair of threes and Palmer Ochoa and Vizconde added one each in the first quarter. Reyes hit again from long distance in the second quarter. Then Vizconde added one more in the third and another in the fourth — the one that made it 43-32.
“When the ball is spread out like that and we’ve got multiple guys scoring, it’s hard to scout us,” Hewitt said. “And when you’ve got to rotate to every guy, it makes it harder.
“This is probably the first team I’ve had in eight years coaching here where I’ve felt like we’ve gotten better each game. Usually, you play good and there’s a game where you drop down a little bit. And then you get better and then you take a step back. We’ve played better each game.”
Ochoa finished with five points off the Mountainside bench and Noah Herrmann, Ryder Eck, and J’Kobi Nicholson had two points each to round out the Mavericks’ scoring.
“Our coach made some great adjustments at halftime,” Zaporteza said. “We just came together as a team and started hitting more shots.”
Zaporteza, one of five seniors on the roster, also has seen steady improvement in the Mavericks from Game 1 to Game 4.
“Everything from energy to shot making to offensive execution,” he said. “I mean, we’ve just got to keep improving through the season now.”
Mountainside is scheduled to play Tuesday at West Linn and Thursday at home against Centennial. The Mavericks then face top-ranked Central Catholic in the opening round of the Les Schwab Invitational on Dec. 26 at Portland State University.
“We had a buzzer-beater last night and we beat a good team today — great memories,” Hewitt said. “Hopefully, at the end of the year, those aren’t the best memories that we have and our best games are ahead of us. The way we’ve improved, I think that’s possible.”
And just like every other team in the state at this stage of the season, Lakeridge still has work to do, too.
“Our whole thing is we’re trying to prepare for our league,” Watts said. “The Three Rivers League is really, really tough, and we’re kind of a group that really doesn’t have individual stars. We kind of joke about it and call ourselves ‘The Average Joes That Nobody Knows.’
“We play together well. They trust each other. They listen. They’re coachable. And that makes up sometimes the difference between maybe not having some of the pure athleticism or the traits that a lot of teams have.
Lakeridge plays host to the Alta Hawks of Sandy, Utah on Wednesday and then travels to play in a three-day tournament in Las Vegas beginning Thursday. The Pacers also will participate in the Les Schwab Invitational, opening against Gonzaga College High School of Washington, D.C., on Dec. 27.
Watts called it “a gigantic schedule in front of us.”
“There’s going to be some highs and some lows and definitely a lot of learning experiences along the way,” he said. “But our whole goal is to try and get ready for the Three Rivers League and we hope that that lands us somewhere that we can get in the playoffs.”
Sprague 59, Cleveland 50: Braxton Long scored a game-high 19 points and Jarod Stanley had 18 points, leading the Olympians (3-1) over the Warriors in Saturday’s third-place game of the Mountainside Holiday Classic. Cleveland’s Finn Cooper finished with 18 points and Brady Ryan had 14 for the Warriors (1-3).
