Defense leads Torrey Pines boys basketball to 63-42 CIF State Open Division win over Damien

The Falcons will host Etiwanda in Saturday’s CIF Southern California Open Division championship.

CARMEL VALLEY, CALIF. -- The dream lives on for Torrey Pines.

The Falcons’ defense imposed their will against Damien, taking them out of their comfort zone and forcing tough shots for most of the night in Thursday's 63-42 victory.

Damien entered having scored 102 points in Tuesday night’s win over St. Joseph Santa Maria, and were held to a season low 42 points against the Falcons.

“Our defense was great all night,” Herrmann said. “We were packing it in and not letting them get anything. We’ve got great coaches that game plan for stuff like this, we knew what we we’re gonna see and when we saw it, we just took everything away.”

The Falcons made life tough on Damien’s Malik Thomas, limiting him to ten points after he scored 33 against St. Joseph two nights ago. The USC-signee was saddled with first half foul trouble and fouled out early in the fourth quarter after charging into Chris Howell for the second time in the half.

“We were just defending,” Herrmann said. “We’ve got guys like Logan (Huston) and Nate (Witte) that come in and just defend their butts off, Chris (Howell) was taking charges and was doing a really good job on (Malik Thomas) and he really couldn’t score or do anything.”

After a back-and-forth first few minutes, the Falcons went on a 25-6 run to end the first half and took a 34-16 lead into the locker room.

Spivey Word knocked down Damien’s first three-pointer of the game midway through the third quarter and added another with just over three minutes to play in the quarter, but the Spartans were unable to get any closer, trailing by double digits for the entire second half.

“We were able to break it open by just getting good stops, getting it up the floor and getting good buckets,” Herrmann said.

After all the excitement of last Saturday night’s buzzer-beating shot by Nick Herrmann to win the San Diego Section title, the Falcons find themselves just 32 minutes away from a second championship and an undefeated season.

“It was great to get a bye (on Tuesday),” Herrmann said postgame. “Transitioning from celebrating from such a big night to something like this is really hard, but this group is special, I’ve been saying it all year and we were able to flip the switch around Monday and now we’re focused on a bigger goal which is a state title.”

The Falcons will host Etiwanda in Saturday’s CIF Southern California Open Division championship.