Garden Grove League : Woodward’s Layup Gives Garden Grove the Upset

Backup guard Tony Woodward scored on a layup with one second left to give Garden Grove High School a 68-66 upset win over Rancho Alamitos Friday night at Garden Grove.

Woodward’s winning basket came on a rebound of teammate Jeff Kanegee’s jump shot with four seconds left. Vaquero forward Roger Carter had tied the contest for Rancho Alamitos at 66-66 on a baseline jump shot with 25 seconds remaining. The Argonauts then called a timeout to set up their final shot.

“In that final timeout,” elated Garden Grove Coach Gene Cambell said. “I just told them to do what we’ve been doing all night: run our offense and take the first good shot when it presents itself and if it doesn’t, take the best you can get at the end. And that’s just what we did.”

“I’m just so proud of my kids,” Cambell said. “We’ve come so close to beating them the last few years, this is great. We lost to them earlier this year, 49-46, after we had a 10-point lead in the third quarter. That time we lost our offensive pressure. We didn’t tonight.”

The contest was close throughout as neither team was able to get a lead of more than six points. Garden Grove, now 4-4 in Garden Grove League play and 13-9 overall, was able to keep pace with the Vaqueros (7-1, 13-8) in the early going mainly because of the hot shooting of the Argonauts’ backcourt tandem of Kenegae (24 points) and Octavio Contreras (19 points).

Despite the loss, which was Rancho Alamitos’ first in league play this year, Vaquero Coach Pat Adams was pleased with his team’s performance.

“This is what it’s all about. A good, tough, close game.” Adams said. “They really played an outstanding game tonight. Both teams did. I thought we did everything we had to do to win, but they got the final bounce.”

Rancho Alamitos was led by junior guard Randy Morales with 22 points.

Los Amigos 39, Santiago 36--Geno Howard’s short jump shot with a minute left gave the Lobos their first lead of the game at 37-36 and they held on to win at Los Amigos.

Howard scored 13 points to lead Los Amigos (3-5, 10-10), and teammate Rashawn Lacy added 11. Rick Burns of the Cavaliers (0-8, 3-16) led all scorers with 16 points.

La Quinta 71, Bolsa Grande 60--The Matadors (6-2, 13-7) had a chance to move into a tie for first place withRancho Alamitos, but were upset by the Aztecs (4-4, 7-10) on the road.

Kenny Bennett led La Quinta with 19 points, and teammate Mike Whitcomb added 18 points, 14 rebounds and 5 assists. Hung Nguyen and Tom Afdahl led Bolsa Grande with 16 points each.