Ventura Still Wins Despite Loss of Tate : Junior college basketball: Pirates get past Compton, 79-66, in first round of Glendale tournament.

GLENDALE —  Ventura College won its 13th consecutive game, its sixth in a row without injured center Michael Tate, by beating Compton, 79-66, in the first round of the Glendale basketball tournament Thursday night.

Yet Pirate Coach Philip Mathews admitted that he is counting the days until the 6-foot-5 Tate returns.

“We’re just not the same team without him,” Mathews said. “He is an integral part of both our offense and our defense. He’s a man out there, especially when it comes to rebounding. When he’s out there, he controls the middle. Right now, we’re rebounding by committee.”

Despite the lack of a dominant rebounder, Ventura was able to defeat Compton (12-5) for the third time this season as starting guards Joey Ramirez (21 points) and D’Mitri Rideout (18) picked up the scoring slack.

Ventura will play Chaffey, a 99-75 winner over L.A. Trade Tech, in a semifinal tonight at 6.

The Pirates (13-1) also got a couple of big steals late in the game which kept the Tartars at bay, but Mathews was not pleased.

“We played terrible tonight,” he said. “We’re not playing with any consistency right now. We play in spurts and that’s not good. When we need to step up and stop someone, we’re able to do that, but it wasn’t a good effort.”

Ventura stretched a 40-36 halftime lead to 56-42 with 12 minutes left, but Compton scored six consecutive points on baskets by Kenneth Maxey (16 points) and Wil Weir (13), and a pair of free throws by Maxey to narrow its deficit to eight.

Ventura countered with a 14-5 run over the next five minutes to take a 70-53 lead with four minutes left.

Brandon Jessie, who played a “horrible” game according to Mathews, came alive during the run, scoring seven of his 11 points.

His last two baskets were dunks. He threw down a two-handed jam over Maxey to give Ventura a 68-53 lead and he followed that with a right-handed dunk on a pass from Rideout.

Ramirez scored most of his points from long range, hitting five three-point shots, but Rideout worked well both inside and outside.

Rideout scored 12 points in the first half by making good use of a four-inch height advantage over Compton guard Jai Young.

Ramirez, a sophomore from Santa Paula High, didn’t seem to care where he shot the ball from as a couple of his three-point baskets in the second half came from four or five feet beyond the three-point line.

“Joey was hot from outside and that helped us out,” Mathews said. “He hit some big shots.”

Compton Coach Lee Porter was just glad that his team will not play Ventura again during the regular season.

“We’ve played them eight times in the last two seasons and lost to them eight times,” Porter said. “They’re just a very talented and well-coached team.”