December games don’t matter as much as league games will next month. But they are games teams want to win, especially when there is revenge or a tournament championship at stake.
Orange Lutheran got both Tuesday. The Lancers beat La Mirada, 57-43, in the Orange Holiday Classic championship game at Hope International University in Fullerton. This was the 50th year of Orange County’s longest-running basketball tournament.
Lutheran senior guard Rogers Printup, who signed with UC Davis, was tournament MVP.
Lutheran had lost to La Mirada, 70-61, in the championship game of the Diablo Inferno tournament on Dec. 6. Kendall Lauderdale, a senior forward who transferred to La Mirada from Orange Lutheran after his junior year, scored 26 points in that game. He was limited to 14 points Tuesday.
Orange Lutheran, 11-2 and ranked No. 2 in Orange County, got a balanced scoring effort. C.J. Hankins and Joseph Riley led the Lancers with 15 points apiece. Printup added 12 points.
The Lancers had a four-point lead at the end of the first quarter, a nine-point lead at halftime, and took an 11-point lead into the fourth quarter.
Lutheran played without key reserve forward Keisean Lucier-South. An All-Orange County football defensive lineman, Lucier-South is in San Antonio, Texas, to play in Saturday’s U.S. Army All-American Game.
Coach Chris Nordstrom of Orange Lutheran said the Lancers played better defensively this time than the last time against La Mirada (11-3).
“That was big for us,” Nordstrom said. “We can shoot the ball better than we did in this tournament. We just need to execute better on offense.”
Also in the Orange Holiday Classic:
No. 4 Foothill 58, No. 3 Canyon 52: The Knights (13-2) scored only three points in the first quarter but rallied to beat the Comanches (10-4) in overtime in the tournament third-place game. The teams are part of the four-team Crestview League, with Esperanza and Villa Park. They will play each other in their first league matchup Jan. 20 at Canyon.
Foothill’s Riley O’Hern, who scored 15 points including a crucial 3-pointer in overtime, enjoyed the opportunity to play Canyon.
“This gave us a little bit of a preview of what our games are going to be like,” O’Hern said. “Everyone wants to play in the championship game, but for a third-place game this was pretty intense.”
Canyon’s quick-cuts-to-the-basket, half-court offense gave the Comanches a 20-3 lead in the second quarter. Foothill had made only 1 of 18 shots at that point of the game. The Knights chomped on the deficit until they tied it with three minutes left in the fourth quarter on an O’Hern 3-pointer.
O’Hern made another 3 with 50 seconds left in overtime to give the Knights a 50-46 lead. Canyon would get no closer than three points after that.
Canyon’s Nick Anderson, a 6-foot-1 senior guard, scored 20 points with 15 rebounds.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
