On a day when a player had three teeth knocked out and suffered a broken wrist and another suffered a concussion in earlier games, Santa Barbara’s terrific trio of Emilio Gonzalez, Jack Baker and Jeff Paschke delivered a knockout blow against Calvary Chapel in the first-round finale of the Santa Barbara Holiday Classic boys basketball tournament on Wednesday.
The trio combined for 47 points in a 57-40 victory at J.R. Richards Gym. The Dons advance to a 7:30 p.m. quarterfinal game against St. Monica on Thursday.
Paschke set the pace early, scoring 14 of his game-high 20 points in the first quarter, which Santa Barbara led 20-11. For the game, Paschke made 8 of 11 shots from the floor.
Baker and Gonzalez made the presence known in the third quarter. Baker made nine of his 15 points in the quarter Gonzalez tallied eight of his 12, as the Dons (8-2) opened up a 51-30 lead.
Philip Schick was the high scorer for Calvary Chapel with nine points.
The beauty of the performance by the Dons was how they shared the basketball and looked for good shots. They shot 54 percent from the floor.
Said Paschke; “I was just open; my teammates got me the ball and I finished my shots. It was all a team thing.”
Paschke noted that usually it’s one of the three who is having a good night in a game. But, there are times when all of them are on fire. Wednesday was one of those nights.
“It’s pretty hard to beat us when we’re all at our best,” he said. “We did pretty well tonight. We passed the ball better than we do most of the times; we’re starting to get better at that. In the second half, we started to picked up our defense a little bit and carried that on for the rest of the game.”
Santa Barbara coach Dave Bregante liked what he saw from his team, especially in the third quarter.
“I thought we shared the ball really well,” he said. “We had some great assists, and that really got us going and broke the game open.”
In the earlier incidents, a South Pasadena player fell face first in the key during a game against Canoga Park and has his front teeth knocked out. The impact left a small divot in the floor.
A Carpinteria player suffered a concussion during a game against Santa Maria.
