UNION CITY, Calif. — Trey Knight and DJ Johnson struggled through the first half on Thursday night, but the two rose to the occasion when they were needed most to keep Moreau Catholic undefeated in MVAL play.
With big contributions from the two juniors, with Knight at point guard and Johnson in the post, the Mariners were able to erase a 13-point third-quarter deficit and emerge with a key road win over defending league and Northern California champion Logan, 58-54.
“I just try to stay clean and keep the game coming to me instead of forcing the game and doing crazy stuff I shouldn’t do,” said Johnson, a 6-foot-7 forward.
While he had 13 rebounds by halftime, five were off his own misses and he had just six points as Moreau Catholic (10-6, 5-0 MVAL) trailed the Colts 31-21. Things wouldn’t get much easier in the third, with the hosts taking their largest lead at 36-23 with 4:51 left in the quarter as both of the Mariners’ key players struggled to score.
It finally started to click for the visitors in the latter half of the third, though. Solomon Thomas, the lone senior on the roster, got his only basket of the night on a putback, and four points from Donovan Tynes had Logan head coach Mel Easley seeing the makings of a comeback, preemptively calling a timeout to try to prevent any bleeding.
“They always come through in the second half,” the two-time NorCal champion coach said. “They’ve got some good athletes on that team. It was a new game.”
The home crowd found some life as the Colts momentarily solved the defense on a Brah’Jon Thompson 3-pointer off a nifty lob pass from Ryan Noriega to restore a 10-point lead, but Jonathan Langford answered with a three of his own and the Mariners would trail just 44-38 by the end of the quarter, with Knight hitting four free throws as his team got into the bonus in a foul-filled affair.
In all, the teams combined for 46 fouls, with 31 in the second half as the game became a constant parade to the free throw line with referees calling an extremely tight but largely consistent game. Even with the friendly rims, Logan (8-8, 4-2) couldn’t seem to find any comfort from the charity stripe, shooting 10-of-21 while Moreau made 22 of 33 attempts, with Knight hitting 10 of 11.
Fittingly, the Mariners found their way back at the free throw line, picking up right where they had left off when the fourth quarter started with a pair of free throws from Knight and three from Johnson, who managed to finish the night 5-of-10 at the line after making his first four. Knight then gave MC the lead for the first time since the opening minutes with a corner three, capping off the 8-0 run to start the fourth.
Thompson, who scored 22 to lead the Colts, would draw a foul on the ensuing possession, and though he’d miss the front end of his own 1-and-1 with 5:46 remaining, he managed to hustle for his own offensive rebound and draw another foul on a 3-point attempt. He’d miss two of the three free throws, though he’d score on a drive after Johnson failed to cash in on a putback attempt, briefly putting the hosts back in front.
However, Knight would score again after a turnover as the Logan fans screamed for a travel, and the Colts would only manage to draw even instead of taking the lead when T.J. Uasike split a pair of free throws with 3:42 to go. Knight and Coby Hawkins would each make one of two on their teams’ following possessions, tying the game at 49, and Johnson, who couldn’t seem to buy a bucket in the first half, gave Moreau the lead again with a graceful spin move.
Thompson would finally have better luck at the line with 2:23 left, bringing the Colts square again, but Moreau would fittingly take the lead for good on more free throws, this time courtesy of Devin Arnold with 2:16 left. Knight would score again in traffic to give the Mariners their first two-possession advantage of the night, and after Uasike split another pair, Thompson’s bid for a game-tying three with a minute left missed.
Not wanting to send the Mariners back to the line, where they had made a killing in the second half, the Colts played out the next possession, but the rebound went out of bounds off Thompson with 27.6 seconds left, forcing the hosts to foul Knight, who made both his attempts for a five-point lead. One more free throw from Langford would help clinch the game as the Mariners remained the only undefeated team in a league where all other teams except Washington have at least two losses.
The fourth quarter, in which the home side was outscored 20-10, was a far cry from the first half, in which the Mariners used a box-and-1 defense to try to slow Thompson but had no answer for Makaio Mims. Playing through a scaphoid fracture in his left hand, Mims went off for 17 points in the first half, going on a personal 10-2 run to help the hosts to a 28-17 lead. Johnson would get the next four, including a dunk off a feed from Mahda Fallay, but a Thompson three to close the half sent Logan into the break up ten.
“We tried to box-and-1 Brah’Jon, but Mims was killing us, so we had to change up what we were doing and we ended up locking up,” Knight said. “Coach Terry (Butler) is a great defensive coach, he’s been doing this forever.”
Mims didn’t even crack the starting lineup as he continued to nurse his hand injury, but with the junior on the court after a choppy first four minutes, the Colts took off.
“He always seems to kill us,” said head coach Frank Knight, Trey’s father. “We wanted to make him catch it a little further from the bucket so we could get our help-side there, and we just tried to rotate fresh guys on him every possession.”
Just as Mims had revved up the hosts, Moreau also got big contributions off the bench. Neither Paolo Koch or freshman LaBrie Goudy-Lee saw the court in the first half, and while neither ended up scoring, both were key players in the fourth quarter, with Koch running a composed offense under pressure and Goudy-Lee helping to turn the game defensively.
“LaBrie came in and made probably the two best blocks of the season, and it motivated us,” the tenth-year head coach said.
The teams will meet again at Moreau on Feb. 8 in a rare Saturday league game. Both will be back in action on Monday, with the Mariners playing in the De La Salle MaxPreps MLK Classic at St. Mary’s, taking on Weston Ranch in the 10 a.m. contest to start the day. The Colts will face Oakland Tech in the “I Have a Dream” Classic at Merritt College.
