After the Chino Hills boys basketball team executed yet another beatdown in the CIF State Southern Section Regional Finals, a fan interrupted an interview with star point guard Lonzo Ball.
“I’ve been following you all year,” the man said holding out a program and a pen with the book open to a page containing a picture of Lonzo.
The 6-foot-5, UCLA-bound basketball star stopped the interview for a moment, signed an autograph for him, and calmly returned to answering questions from the five or so reporters gathered around after Chino Hills defeated Bishop Montgomery of Torrance, 84-62, to advance to the Open Division title game against De La Salle of Concord on Saturday night at Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento.
That’s the kind of season it has been for the 34-0 Huskies and the only response you can get out of the players is, “It’s been great.”
It’s been great for Southern California prep basketball fans, too.
Tickets to their games sell out within hours, sometimes minutes of them going on sale, and fans are willing to wait in hours-long lines that file down streets and wrap around corners.
Last week’s regional championship game at Long Beach State, which didn’t tip until 9:06 p.m., was a standing-room-only crowd of 4,556 eager to get a glimpse at the Ball Brothers & Co.
Video highlight producers and photographers have stood shoulder-to-shoulder on both baselines as Chino Hills has navigated through a jet-setting schedule, beating national and state-ranked competition out of the states of Florida, North Carolina, New York, Milwaukee, Georgia, New Jersey and, of course, California.
The Huskies crushed some of the best in-state competition at the BattleZONE Tournament hosted by Centennial of Corona, then they flew 2,600 miles to Fort Myers, Fla., and won the prestigious City of Palms Tournament.
Next up was the MaxPreps Holiday Classic in the Palm Springs area, followed by a showcase game at the HoopHall Classic 3,000 miles away in Springfield, Mass.
Chino Hills then blew through its league, finishing 10-0 to capture its first Baseline League crown since joining in 2014-15, and peppered in a nonleague win over Bishop Montgomery, then the No. 12-ranked team in the country, at the Fairfax State Preview in late January.
The next big challenge for Chino Hills was the “daunting” CIF Southern Section Open Division playoffs.
Turns out it wasn’t so daunting after all. The Huskies routed their way to the Open championship, beating Santa Margarita, Inglewood and Mater Dei by an average of 38.6 points per game and then crushed then-national No. 4 Sierra Canyon of Chatsworth, 105-83, in the Southern Section championship game March 5 at Honda Center.
Chino Hills has scored 100 points in 18 games this season, tying Balboa of San Francisco for the state record, according to the staff at Cal-Hi Sports. The Huskies run-and-gun, lob-and-dunk, press-and-steal, but all in a cerebral way which simultaneously respects the game and the opponent.
Nobody has come close to taking down Chino Hills since its four-point win over Bishop Montgomery on Jan. 30; one in which Lonzo shot 2 of 21 from the field which he readily admits was one of the worst games of his career.
When describing Chino Hills you can’t fail to mention that Lonzo and Coach Steve Baik have racked up the individual honors.
The eldest Ball has been named the Naismith Player of the Year, Gatorade State Player of the Year and the Morgan Wooten Player of the Year, while Baik earned the Naismith Coach of the Year award.
Still, with all the above-mentioned accolades, Chino Hills continues to go about its business quietly despite all the hoopla that follows it.
“As you can see we’re really not jumping up and down after we win,” Lonzo Ball said after the win that propelled the Huskies into the Open State Finals. “We have one more thing to handle, and after we finish that, we’ll jump up and down and celebrate, but until then, we’re going to stay focused.”
The next order of business is trying to win that Open Division State title game Saturday against 31-2 De La Salle, something Chino Hills couldn’t do last season in the Division I title game, losing to Valley of San Ramon, 79-71, in a Lonzo-less overtime that had Ball watching from the sideline with five fouls.
This team is much different, though.
LiAngelo Ball is a year older and wiser. Elizjah Scott is eligible and a flat-out beast. LaMelo Ball is a crafty freshman who can score, pass and take ball-handling duties from Lonzo when need-be. And Onyeka Okongwu is playing his way into a potential California State Freshman of the Year type season.
But while people are quick to look to all the gaudy offensive numbers the Huskies put up, Baik believes the defensive effort and competitive spirit of his team are what’s kept them going and what should be the difference come Saturday.
“We’re not really known for defense, but we’ve been playing great defense this whole playoff run,” he said. “They’re not going to stop until they’re No. 1 in the nation. We know we have one more game to go and we’re not going to celebrate until after that game.”
The fans who file into Sleep Train Arena on Saturday might sport a perplexed look when they hear the words “Chino Hills” and “defense” uttered in the same sentence, but that defense leads to the dynamic offense, and therein lies the key to the Huskies success.
