SACRAMENTO – When a player like Kezie Okpala is on a team’s roster, it is tempting to say that’s a one-man team.
But nobody wins a CIF State basketball championship by being a one-man team.
Esperanza got contributions from several players Saturday to win the CIF State Division II boys basketball championship. The Aztecs beat Moreau Catholic of Hayward, 72-65, at Golden 1 Center.
Aztecs junior forward Brendan Harrick scored a team-high 25 points, including two 3-pointers in the fourth quarter. Garrett Geiger came off of the bench to score 10 points and block three shots. Travis Kettering, who at 5-foot-11 was at times the smallest player on the court, hustled his way to six rebounds.
Collectively, the Aztecs were stout on defense as they have been throughout the season. They held Moreau Catholic to 34 percent shooting and outrebounded the muscular Mariners, 35-30. Esperanza’s bench outscored Moreau’s bench, 16-6.
Okpala was good, as usual. He scored 22 points with 12 rebounds and three blocked shots.
His 10 field-goal attempts was an unusually low total for him. Scorers will get their points somewhere, somehow. Okpala, a 6-foot-8 senior who signed with Stanford, was 11 for 15 at the free-throw line.
Okpala ends his high school basketball days with school records for career, single-season and single-game scoring. He averaged an Orange County-leading 30.4 points a game. Okpala’s 46 points against Crossroads of Santa Monica in the CIF Southern California Regionals broke his own school single-game record.
Esperanza coach Mark Hill maintained the Aztecs would not have won 30 games and a state championship if Okpala was their only asset.
“Even in games when Kezie scored 46 or whatever, I’ve always said this is not a one-man team,” Hill said. “And, boy, was that true today.”
It was the first state championship game appearance for the Aztecs, who finished with a 30-3 record. Their season included going undefeated in the Crestview League to win the league championship and a 22-game winning streak. Esperanza was placed in the CIF-Southern Section Open Division for the playoffs, in which they went 0-2.
All CIF-SS Open Division teams automatically qualified for the state tournament. In the CIF Southern California Regionals, the Aztecs got rolling again. They won their four regional games by an average margin of 28 points to get to the state championship game.
The Aztecs looked like they might get their state title rather easily Saturday. They had a 22-7 lead at the end of the first quarter. After being outscored, 19-12, in the second quarter, Esperanza had a 34-26 lead at halftime.
Moreau, sporting a sprawling full-court press, started strong in the third quarter and snagged a 37-36 lead. The Aztecs came right back to regain the lead for good. They broke the press, with Geiger putting in a layup off of slick lead pass from Julian Almazan to put Esperanza on top, 38-37.
Esperanza brought a 47-42 lead into the fourth quarter. That’s when Harrick and Okpala were difference-makers. Harrick, great nephew of former UCLA and Pepperdine coach Jim Harrick, dropped in a pair of high-arc 3s from the corner. Okpala continued to draw fouls, and made seven free throws in the final 3:07 to help seal the win.
Okpala was Esperanza’s undisputed star this season. Winning 30 games and a state championship, though, was a community effort.
Esperanza’s starting five of Harrick, Kettering, Okpala, Jared Obermeier, who made two 3s Saturday, and Garrett Poling (two points, four rebounds) and reserve Brandon Alpern (four points, two rebounds) have been teammates since they were in fourth grade.
“In this era of transfers,” Hill said, “I think there’s nothing sweeter than seeing a team that has grown up together and loved each other, and believed in each other and played basketball with each other, reach this point.”
Contact the writer: sfryer@scng.com