Clearly feeding off the electricity of Anzar’s home gym, the
host Hawks, behind 18 points apiece from both Mark Rania and Alex
Valles, outscored Anchorpoint 23-6 in the second quarter en route
to a 61-47 victory on Thursday night in Coastal Athletic League
action.
SAN JUAN BAUTISTA
Prior to the start of the third quarter, with his team leading visiting Anchorpoint Christian by a comfortable 31-17 margin, Anzar head coach Ed Cecena couldn’t help but notice the obvious boost his team was receiving from the ruckus home crowd in San Juan Bautista.
“We should have Homecoming every home game,” Cecena said.
Clearly feeding off the electricity of Anzar’s home gym, the host Hawks, behind 18 points apiece from both Mark Rania and Alex Valles, outscored Anchorpoint 23-6 in the second quarter en route to a 61-47 victory on Thursday night in Coastal Athletic League action.
It was one of the best games for the Hawks all season, Cecena said, and the borderline-deafening crowd appeared to be the biggest difference.
“This is Homecoming. It’s real rowdy and they bring a lot of energy,” said Rania, who had six of his team-high 18 points during Anzar’s key second quarter of play. The senior forward, who was one of six seniors on the Hawks celebrating Senior Night, also had six rebounds in the win.
“It drove us to play real hard,” Rania said. “It’s Senior Night, and it was good to go out with a bang.”
Rania actually scored 18 points against Anchorpoint in their previous meeting on Jan. 20, but the host Warriors earned a 63-53 victory in that game.
Anchorpoint appeared to be heading in a similar direction on Thursday night as well when the Warriors jumped out to an 11-5 first-quarter lead. But Valles drained a 3-pointer from the corner in the waning seconds of the first to cut the deficit to three points, while the Hawks built momentum off the crowd’s energy early in the second period.
Although the Warriors held a 17-14 lead with 4:20 remaining in the half, they went cold for the remainder of the quarter, and Anzar took over.
Andres Gomez’s jumper in the paint cut Anchorpoint’s lead to 17-16, while Niko Hebert followed with a runner in the lane 20 seconds later to give the Hawks a one-point edge.
The Hawks, who improve to 5-4 in the CAL and 7-16 overall, finished the second quarter on a 17-0 run.
“The players played with a lot of adrenaline,” Cecena said. “The atmosphere was great tonight. This was a good bounce-back game for us.”
Anzar’s second quarter, which proved to be the difference in the end, saw the Hawks shoot 10 of 18 from the field and 3 of 4 from the line. Meanwhile, Anchorpoint, which committed 10 turnovers in the second quarter, was 2 of 14 from the field.
“The other team, they had a lot of turnovers,” Rania said. “We turned that energy into our transition points — a lot of transition points. That helped us out a lot.”
While Anzar was anchored by both Rania and Valles, the Hawks received eight points and 11 rebounds from Hebert and seven points and five rebounds from Dylan Doty. Gomez finished with six points.
“And tonight, our defense was pretty good,” Cecena said. “It was one of our better defensive efforts all year.”
The Hawks will wrap up their regular season on Tuesday when they will visit York at 5:30 p.m.
TEAM 1 2 3 4 F
APT 11 6 15 15 47
ANZ 8 23 17 13 61
