TEMECULA — Troy needed several things to happen to beat second-seeded Temecula Valley in the CIF-SS Division 1A boys basketball playoffs Wednesday night.
They needed to knock down 3s.
They needed Collin Lee and Semir Shafi to play out of their minds.
And they needed Riley Schaefer, the Golden Bears’ best player, to play out of his mind — in the bad way.
None of that happened. Instead, Temecula Valley beat Troy, 73-57, behind Schaefer’s 20 points and stalwart 3-point defense.
The Golden Bears mostly played zone defense, with 6-foot-9 Scott Hollingsworth manning the paint and four players suffocating the perimeter.
It clearly worked.
The Warriors, who practically earned their Freeway League at-large berth with 3-pointers, made just 7 of 25 from long range.
“At the end of the day, when you’re playing 6-foot-6 (and) 6-foot-9 (players), it makes it tough, and the margin of error is slim,” Troy coach Aaron Mason said.
Lee didn’t get going until the fourth quarter, when Troy (15-13) outscored a reserve-heavy Bears lineup, 21-10. He finished with 12 points on 4-of-17 shooting.
Shafi, Troy’s tallest player at 6-4, battled hard but lost the war in the paint to Hollingsworth. He scored 10 points on 4-of-13 shooting.
“If the story of the season is we came up short because of a few missed baskets, I’ll take that over we just didn’t execute or didn’t put your effort out there,” Mason said. “We did.”
The Bears (25-4, 9-1) jumped out to an 18-5 lead behind 8 first-quarter points from Schaefer, a Cal Poly Pomona basketball signee.
Troy opened the second quarter hot and trailed, 23-12, early in the period. But a quarter-court alley-oop connection between Hollingsworth and Camden Parenti triggered a 21-12 scoring run for the Bears, leaving Troy down, 44-24, at halftime.
