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MANHATTAN BEACH — They’ve been close before. They’ve made long playoff runs before.
But on Saturday at Mira Costa High School, the Valencia boys basketball team finally broke through the last barrier it hadn’t been able to break in program history.
The Vikings held on to a slim lead in a high-pressure fourth quarter to defeat St. Bonaventure 65-62 in the CIF Southern Section Division 4AA final for their first section title.
“There’s been so many good players that have played here and so many times they have been on the cusp, it just took that one team to finish it,” Valencia head coach Bill Bedgood said. “It felt like we kind of kept running out of gas in the semifinals, but I just knew that this was the team to break through because of the confidence. It was a matter of a time before someone broke through.”
“I feel like we’ve been through more than most teams have in two years,” senior Kai Davis said. We won Section 7, won all the tournaments, had hard practices, hard workouts, so I’m not surprised that we got to this point because it was in due time that something like this had to happen.”
While the final score indicated a tight game, Valencia dictated the pace from the start.
The Vikings’ transition game kept the Seraphs on their heels, giving them little time to set up their defense. This gave Davis and Mikah Ballew openings to the paint, allowing for easy opportunities at the basket or trips to the free throw line after drawing a foul.
Valencia hangs on 65-62. Nico Macias had a good look at the buzzer with a chance to send the game to OT @Tarek_Fattal pic.twitter.com/RhQYgYzglW
— Dan Lovi (@LoviSports) February 25, 2023
The Vikings made 14 of 16 free throws, an advantage Bedgood said instilled more confidence in his team.
“This is the best free throw shooting team I’ve ever coached,” he said. “It’s huge in close…
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