Stall Only Slows Down Monte Vista’s Triumph

SPRING VALLEY — You’re a high school basketball coach. You’re out-playing and surprisingly leading the best team in your league by three points, minutes into the second quarter.

All of a sudden, your opponent switches to a 2-3 zone defense because your quicker players had shredded their half-court trapping scheme to that point.

What would you do?

Since Monte Vista, the best team in the Grossmont 3-A League and ranked second in the county by The Times, eventually came back Friday night and won going away, 73-47, it might not have mattered that Helix Coach John Singer decided to stall for nearly five minutes against the Monarchs’ zone.

But the fact remains, he did.

“We’re up by three,” Singer explained. “(They’ve) got the better athletes. Why not shorten the game?”

To some, the stall strategy was as mystifying as Helix having a 26-23 lead with 4:53 left in the second quarter.

With 21 second left, it was still 26-23.

Helix held the ball near midcourt for 4:32 before Monte Vista finally released a player to pressure the ball. And when Bobby Miller’s three-point attempt with 18 seconds left bounced off the rim, Monte Vista’s Jason Peck got the rebound, passed upcourt and Aaron Elliott nailed a jumper from the top of the key with one second left to make it 26-25 at the half.

“That was a real confidence boost for us going into halftime,” Elliott said. “I think it really helped us.

“We knew they were going to (stall) at some point. Coach (Zack Peck) told us before the game, ‘If we go into a zone, they’ll stall.’ It was almost a shock when they did it. I couldn’t believe they’d do with five minutes left in the half.

“They were doing everything right, and we weren’t playing that well. It was scary there for a while. I give credit to Helix; they’re a good team.”

Monte Vista (15-1, 1-0) owned the game in the second half, outscoring Helix, 18-4, in the third quarter and 30-17 in the fourth. Helix fell to 10-5, 0-1.

With Helix making three free throws--one after a Monte Vista technical foul--to break a 23-23 tie, the Highlanders went 11:40 between field goals before Lloyd Lake (21 points) made a basket with 2:40 left in the third quarter.

By then, Monte Vista had built a six-point lead and increased that to 15 early in the fourth quarter. Helix pulled to within, 51-43, with 3:37 left, but Monte Vista scored 22 of the final 26 points.

“Better kids, better athletes broke us down in the second half,” Singer said.

Marty Ellis led Monte Vista with 23 points, and Elliott had 16, but it was Matt Ehlke who helped keep the Monarchs in the game early. Ehlke scored nine of Monte Vista’s 13 points and finished with 16 points and eight rebounds before fouling out with 3:04 left.

“Aaron Elliott is a great skill basketball player,” Coach Peck said. “But Matt Ehlke makes us. Every team I’ve ever had that’s been decent had a Matt Ehlke. He’s just so darned consistent.”