Santa Margarita basketball knocks off St. John Bosco to win Trinity League tournament

FULLERTON – Winning any boys basketball league championship two years in a row is a laudable accomplishment.

To do that in the Trinity League two years in a row is even more remarkable.

Santa Margarita has done that for two years in a row, and in two different ways.

The Eagles defeated St. John Bosco, 57-56, on Wednesday at Hope International University in the championship game of the first Trinity League Tournament.

They won the Trinity League championship last season in the usual manner, through a 10-game league schedule.

Now the two teams go on to the CIF Southern Section playoffs. Both are certain to be in the elite Open Division when CIF-SS brackets are released Saturday at noon.

In the CIF-SS rankings St. John Bosco is No. 3 overall and Santa Margarita is No. 4. The number of teams selected to the Open Division won’t be known until Saturday, but it is a sure thing that St. John Bosco (20-7) and Santa Margarita (26-3) will be in it.

“Now we’ve got to rest up and get ready for the playoffs,” said Santa Margarita coach Justin Bell.

The contest was a great battle between two very skilled teams. It was similar to their one regular-season league game, which the Braves won 74-73 in double overtime last month at Santa Margarita High.

Senior forward Drew Anderson led Santa Margarita with 24 points. Eagles senior forward Brayden Kyman scored 20 points with six 3-point baskets, including two crucial ones in the fourth quarter.

Santa Margarita senior guard Kaiden Bailey, who scored 29 points when the teams met last month, was scoreless Wednesday on 0-for-10 shooting.

Credit for that goes to St. John Bosco senior Tariq Iscandari whose tight defense stifled Bailey all game. Bailey did have five assists.

St. John Bosco 6-9 senior Christian Collins was excellent, as usual. He scored 32 points. Collins, who has offers from every top-shelf college basketball program in the nation, made 10 of his 17 shots.

No other Braves player scored more than five points.

“This league is tough,” Kyman said. “We were just out here competing. We had a little rough patch in the first quarter but we kept competing.”

St. John Bosco was the better team for much of the game. The Braves outscored Santa Margarita, 16-9, over the last four minutes of the first quarter to take a 23-16 lead into the second quarter.

St. John Bosco was ahead, 33-32, at halftime.

Collins made jump shots of 15 and 17 feet in the final moments of the third quarter to guide the Braves to a 46-42 lead going into the fourth quarter.

St. John Bosco’s 56-52 lead disappeared when Kyman made a 3-pointer and Eagles senior forward Markee White banked in a short shot with 58 seconds remaining in the game to put the Eagles on top, 57-56.

On St. John Bosco’s first chance to retake the lead, Collins was called for an offensive foul.

A five-second violation against Santa Margarita returned possession to St. John Bosco.

The Braves’ Max Ellis was off target on a 3-point attempt. Iscandari won the battle for the rebound but stepped out of bounds under the basket, giving the ball back to the Eagles.

After an intentional foul on St. John Bosco, Santa Margarita made another turnover. That gave the Braves possession under their offensive basket with 1.5 seconds remaining. After a timeout, St. John Bosco inbounded the ball to Ellis who missed his 3-point try, and the Eagles escaped with the victory.

Trinity League teams played a five-game league schedule, with each team playing a league opponent one time. The results of those league games were used to seed teams for the league tournament.