SACRAMENTO — Any believer that opposites attract would love the Damien Spartans.
A boisterous group of hoopsters meshed perfectly with Mike LeDuc, the second-winningest coach in California high school basketball history.
It was the players, not LeDuc, who did almost all of the talking after Friday night’s 65-57 win over Clovis North in the CIF Division I Championship won their coach his first state title after 42 seasons and 1,018 victories.
“Coach doesn’t like to express much emotion,” Colorado commit RJ Smith said after scoring 15 points in his final high school game. “He likes to keep it low-key. He likes to give the spotlight to his players.”
Those players certainly enjoyed the spotlight after toppling the Broncos on Friday night, with all five starters, sixth man Xavier Clinton and the 11 other reserves basking in the glow of the second state championship in Damien history, showing off their dance moves during their postgame press conference.
Their moves on the court weren’t bad, either.
Faced with a Clovis North side that had won four straight road games, each time traveling a roughly 350-mile round trip to do so, the Spartans showed why they had earned the top seed in the Southern California Division I field, leading 22-12 after a quarter and going up by as much as 20 in the third before the 13th-seeded Broncos made a late push. UC Riverside commit Kaleb Smith led Damien (32-4) with 23 points and point guard Spivey Word scored 17 as the Spartans scored 20 fastbreak points and recorded 14 steals.
“We went from turning the ball over four times against St. Ignatius to turning it over 18 times,” Clovis North head coach Tony Amundsen said. “Some of that’s their length and athleticism, but some of that’s on us.”
Despite trailing 53-33 after the Spartans went on an 18-6 run, the Broncos did claw back into the game. Niko Jones’ 3-pointer to end the third started a 9-0 surge, but Damien never let the lead get smaller than 10 until the final 30 seconds. By that time, Amundsen had exhausted his final timeout.
“If we cleaned the turnovers up, I think we’d have a shot to win it at the end,” he said.
Nobody would have doubted Clovis North (22-12) in a tight, late-game situation if it had gotten there. The Broncos were well established as road warriors after taking down four of the top five seeds in Northern California to reach Friday’s game.
“My butt and my back hurt, and my shoulders hurt from doing this a lot,” Amundsen said as he pantomimed driving a van.
Sophomore point guard Connor Amundsen, the head coach’s son, continued his excellent play in the defeat, scoring a game-high 25 points.
“As a dad, I’ll probably reflect on it later and have those proud dad moments,” his father said. “I’ve got my coach’s hat on during every game and every practice.”
Jones, who finished with six points, was the lone senior to play for the Broncos until the final 12 seconds of the game. Junior Jaylen Bryant and sophomore Jordan Espinoza scored 10 apiece to supplement Amundsen.
Just five players scored for the Spartans, with Jimmy Oladokun and Bradley Xie adding five points apiece. Oladokun had nine rebounds, while Xie had five steals and four assists, all while playing the Clovis North fans like a wrestling villain in a game that looked more like a cage match than a football game in the fourth quarter.
“I had to embrace the physicality,” Xie said. “Going into freshman year, I was really skinny.”
Oladokun, a 6-foot-8 junior with an offer from New Mexico, and Clinton, a sophomore, were the only underclassmen to see time for Damien before the final minute.
