Brayden Burries leads Roosevelt boys basketball team past Centennial in Big VIII League title game – Press Enterprise

Brayden Burries leads Roosevelt boys basketball team past Centennial in Big VIII League title game – Press Enterprise

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CORONA — Roosevelt boys basketball coach Stephen Singleton sent a player to the scorer’s table with about 4 minutes remaining on the clock to take Brayden Burries’ place on the court.

Before he exited, however, Burries treated those in attendance to one final highlight.

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A steal and dunk by Burries was the exclamation point on the McDonald’s All-American’s 39-point outburst in Tuesday evening’s Big VIII League championship game at Santiago High School.

Burries scored 29 of those points over the second and third quarters, as the Mustangs pulled away for an 83-51 victory over Centennial to claim the program’s second consecutive league title.

“He is a straight competitor and someone who enjoys playing the game,” Singleton said of Burries. “I’m always impressed with him… how hard he goes and the confidence he has in himself.”

Roosevelt (28-2 overall, 7-0 overall) is expected to receive the No. 2 seed for the CIF Southern Section’s Open Division playoffs when pairings are released Saturday at noon. The Mustangs were the Open Division runner-up to Harvard-Westlake last year. Harvard-Westlake is in line to be the Open Division’s No. 1 seed, but the Wolverines have one final game Wednesday night.

The final margin Tuesday night was 32 points, but Roosevelt missed its first five shots from the field and found itself in a nine-point hole just 3 1/2 minutes into the game.

Centennial (14-16, 5-2) raced to an 11-2 lead after C.J. Richardson knocked down a pair of 3-pointers and then sank three free throws after being fouled on another shot from behind the arc.

“Our guys wanted to win an outright league title and be back-to-back Big VIII tournament league champs, and they came out a bit overhyped,” Singleton said of his team’s rough start Tuesday.

“We just needed to get warmed up a bit. We settled down and took care of business.”

And Roosevelt worked its way back with its defensive pressure. The Mustangs forced seven Centennial turnovers in the opening quarter and only trailed 18-17 at the start of the second period.

“I don’t even want to know how many turnovers we had,” Centennial coach Josh Giles said. “We have to do a better job taking care of the ball. With a team like Roosevelt, you can’t allow them to start playing downhill because things get away quickly… We’ve been on the other side of that many times. When you get teams to make mistakes like that, things start to turn in your favor.”

Roosevelt, ranked No. 7 in the nation by Maxpreps.com, outscored the Huskies 51-22 over the second and third quarters combined and turned a close game into a runaway. Burries began his takeover when he drained a 3-pointer early in the second quarter to give the Mustangs a 20-18 advantage. Burries scored 13 points in the second period and added 16 more points in the third.

“I told him as he walked off the court, ‘I’m glad this is the last time we have to play you,’ ” Giles said about Burries. “In the time I’ve been here at Centennial, we’ve been very fortunate to play against some great players in the Big VIII League. I’m thinking of guys like Kawhi Leonard and Matt Mitchell, and Brayden is up there… As a coach, you don’t shed tears when they graduate.”

When he was a freshman at Riverside Poly, Burries scored only two points when he played Centennial for the first time in his career. And he was held to 12 points in the first meeting against the Huskies last season. He has been unstoppable since, averaging 32.7 points per game against the Huskies in the last three meetings, with Tuesday’s 39-point effort being the high mark.

“I definitely remember them,” Burries said of his first two games against Centennial. “The last three time we played them was a new story… I was just looking to dominate and have some fun.”



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