CORONA — The Corona Centennial boys basketball program has made the cozy confined of its gymnasium a true fortress in recent seasons.
Harvard-Westlake is one of the few programs to have much success at Centennial’s gym over the past four years, and the Wolverines knocked down the walls once again Tuesday evening and conquered the Huskies.
Trent Perry, Nikolas Khamenia and Brady Dunlap combined to score 63 points Tuesday, as Harvard-Westlake led from start to finish and routed the defending state champion Huskies 80-61 to win the CIF State Open Division regional championship and book its trip to Sacramento.
Harvard-Westlake (32-2) will square off against Santa Maria St. Joseph (28-6), which knocked off Modesto Christian 72-58 to win the Northern California regional title. This is Harvard-Westlake’s fifth trip to the state finals and first since winning the Division IV championship in 2016.
Centennial (30-4) saw its 52-game winning streak against in-state opponents and a 29-game home winning streak come to an end Tuesday. The last program to beat Centennial in both cases was Harvard-Westlake, which handed the Huskies a 70-65 loss on March 28, 2021. Tuesday’s victory was the fifth time Harvard-Westlake has beaten Centennial over the past four seasons and the fourth time the Wolverines have prevailed in Corona.
“We have great players. They have great players,” Wolverines coach David Rebibo said after the game. “Styles are an important part of basketball games, and I think we do a great matching up against them. We presented a few issues and did a good job exploiting them.”
Centennial and Harvard-Westlake have been the state’s top-ranked squads much of the season, which made Tuesday regional championship one of the most anticipated games of the year. The teams were the No. 1 and No 2 seeds, respectively, for the CIF Southern Section’s Open Division playoffs and were expected to meet in the section finals. Centennial took care of business and…
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