BEAVERTON — The basketball found its way to Mountainside guard Palmer Ochoa again and again and again on Saturday afternoon.
He was the one with the hot hand for the Mavericks.
Ochoa knocked down six 3-pointers and finished with a game-high 23 points to help lift the Mavericks to a 70-61 victory over the Lakeridge Pacers in the championship final of the Mountainside Holiday Tourney at Mountainside High School.
Eli Vizconde scored 16 points, Rogen Brown had 13, and Kobi Nicholson added 10 for the Mavericks (3-1), who used a 12-0 run at the end of the second quarter to take a 44-29 halftime lead and never looked back.
Daniyal Lewis led Lakeridge with 18 points, while Micah Leake had 14 and Logan Baertsch Kovalchick chipped in 13 for the Pacers (1-2).
“I think we came out kind of slow, but then we really picked it up,” Ochoa said after the Mavericks ran their winning streak to three games. “Eli and I started hitting some shots and we were getting some (defensive) stops. Then in the fourth quarter, we slowed down a little bit, but I thought we did a good job maintaining the lead, overall.”
Mountainside led by as many as 21 points when — guess who? — Ochoa drilled a 3-pointer to make it 56-35 with 3:55 to play in the third quarter.
Lakeridge battled back, cutting the deficit to 65-59 on a pair of Heath Outcalt free throws with 2:22 to play, but that was as close as the Pacers came down the stretch.
“If you’d had asked me at halftime about the performance, I would have been real happy,” Mountainside coach Dustin Hewitt said. “After the game, though, that’s three games in a row where we’ve had a sizable lead and we can’t put the team away.
“Ultimately, I was proud of the whole game. But if you just look at the second half, I thought Lakeridge just played harder than us. That’s an extremely scrappy team. And we talked about it at halftime, a team that shoots as well as they do, plays as hard as they do … that team does not give up.”
There were eight lead changes in the first 11 minutes of the game and it was still a one-possession game when Lakeridge’s Lewis scored from under the basket to pull the Pacers within 32-29 with 3:12 left in the second quarter.
Then came Mountainside’s 12-0 run over the closing 2:55 of the half.
Brown drove the left baseline for a basket to get things started, followed by an Ochoa 3-pointer, another Ochoa trey (his fourth of the first half), a Vizconde 3-pointer, and, finally, a Brown free throw that made it 44-29.
“It’s all about confidence, you know,” said Ochoa, the Mavs’ 6-foot guard. “We’ve been putting in a lot of work, especially with our shooting, and it’s all about reps. I think we capitalized on that at the end of the half.
“I feel if I make one, I can get going right off the bat. That’s all I need to see is one go in and then the rest feel great.”
During that brief stretch, Mountainside went 4-for-6 from the field with three 3-pointers and 1-for-2 at the free-throw line. The Mavs also had one turnover and two offensive rebounds.
“If we could bottle up those last three minutes of the half and then play 32 that way, we’d be a damn good team,” Hewitt said. “I think Palmer just got on a heater and he was hitting some bombs. I don’t think a lot of people know about him, yet. He’s a very talented player. When he gets going — and we’ve seen it in practice — he’s a load to guard.”
At the same time Mountainside was building its 15-point halftime lead, Lakeridge closed the half with five empty possessions, going 0-for-3 from the field and 0-for-2 at the free-throw line with one turnover and zero offensive rebounds.
“When Mountainside went on that run, we took some ill-advised, quick shots and we weren’t putting pressure on their defense,” Lakeridge coach James Watts said. “We were starting to just kind of chuck it and trying to do too much one-on-one stuff, instead of moving the ball.”
It was a different story in Friday’s tourney opener — a 96-69 romp over Sprague that saw the Pacers knock down lots of baskets with lots of assists.
“In Friday’s game, the ball was really moving,” James said. “Today, not many assists, not many paint touches. In fact, our power forward, Daniyal Lewis, had the most paint touches and that’s a bad sign when your guards are not getting into the paint and breaking down the defense.
“That was a lot of the problem with the run Mountainside went on. They were scoring and hitting big shots, and then we’re coming down and rushing and taking shots that didn’t put pressure on the defense.”
Lakeridge continued to battle in the second half and Mountainside helped. The Mavericks were more deliberate on offense, content to work the ball around the perimeter and run the shot clock inside 10 seconds before looking to seriously attack — a definite departure from how they played in building a 21-point lead.
“The game got a little chaotic and we were trying to slow it down,” Hewitt said. “Lakeridge flourishes in chaos. They are very good at it. That’s not necessarily our game, so we wanted to win trying to play our game, not their game.
“We just tried to kill a little bit of clock when we could and our guys got a little bit defensive. Lakeridge just has active hands. They would just poke the ball away from us when we weren’t anticipating it and then get out in transition. So, we talked about respecting your opponents and treating every possession like it’s the most important one.”
With less than a minute to play, it was still a two-possession game. Lakeridge was forced to foul and the Mavericks responded by going 5-for-6 at the free-throw line to seal the decision.
“You’ve got to give credit to Mountainside, because they kind of took us out of what we wanted to do,” Watts said. “One of the things we’ve been successful with is trying to frustrate teams with different defensive looks, but we weren’t really able to do that, because they responded right away.”
One silver lining from Saturday’s game for the Pacers — they were within striking distance with two minutes to play after being down by 21.
“That’s the thing about this group of kids — they’re willing to ride the ship, whatever that looks like, so they don’t ever give up,” Watts said. “They’re a real gritty group and that’s kind of what our whole focus is. Our mantra is: ‘Grit, grind, greatness.’ We have to play with a lot of grit, we have to grind out possessions, and we’ve also got to play a little smarter.”
Both teams return to action on Tuesday when Lakeridge travels to Woodburn, while Mountainside plays host to West Linn.
“We’re just getting to know each other and still learning a lot of new roles,” Ochoa said. “I think we’ve improved a lot since our first game. Today, we kinda put it all together and I think we’re coming along pretty well.”
Said Hewitt: “Definitely, we’ve improved over the four games. We still have a long way to go — just attention to detail and treating every possession the same. We tend to play four really good possessions and then we take one off. That’s still something that we’re working on.
“But we’re definitely kind of finding our identity. We’re definitely getting some balanced scoring. I think we’ve had at least three kids in double figures every game. And we’re starting to define our roles a little bit and what we’re good at and where we need to improve.”
And part of that identity is everyone on the team has the green light to shoot 3s, right?
“No, not everybody,” Hewitt said. “We want to shoot the 3. That definitely stretches the floor. We don’t want to rely on it, though.
“Ultimately, you’ve got to win five playoff games to hang the banner — that’s everyone’s goal — and the odds of you shooting efficiently from long range in five straight games against five good teams isn’t great and we don’t want to rely on that.
“We definitely have more of an emphasis on getting the ball inside. Two-point shooting tends to be a little more consistent. But we don’t want to neglect 3s. It’s still modern-day basketball and if it’s an efficient shot, then we want to shoot it.”
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