By Carlos Alvarez
The East Los Angeles College men’s basketball team traveled to Los Angeles Trade Tech College yesterday, coming away with an impressive 94-79 victory.
“We moved the ball well. Defensively we made some stops. It was a good win for us,” ELAC Head Coach John Mosley said.
With Trade Tech moving from a full court press to a three-two zone defensively throughout the game, ELAC shared the ball efficiently.
ELAC continued to make the extra pass, moving the ball around the arc as Trade Tech players struggled to maintain a defensive stand.
“We could have done a better job defensively. We have a lot of respect for ELAC, but we didn’t execute defensively,” Trade Tech shooting guard Everett Osbourne said.
With things going their way offensively the Huskies struggled to maintain the Beavers from scoring in the paint during the first half.
Osbourne lead Trade Tech with 11 points in the first half with most of his scoring opportunities coming from within five feet from the basket.
“I missed a lot of free throws. We fought to the end. It was a good effort, we are very resilient team will learn from this game,” Osbourne said.
ELAC lead at halftime 41-40, behind the scoring of Aaron Cheatum and the hustle play of Zach Hinton.
Cheatum scored 11 points and Hinton had ten hard fought points in the first half.
The first ten minutes of the second half was no different from the first half, with no team leading by more than two points.
“We got behind in the first half, but we kept grinding. In the second half we made some changes defensively that changed the game in our favor,” ELAC forward Primitivo Gomez said.
After their defensive adjustments ELAC never trailed and extended their lead after starting forward Te’shon Burton connected from the three-point range, to put the Huskies ahead 74-67 with seven minutes left on the clock.
In a span of one minute, Burton connected from beyond the arc in consecutive offensive possessions pushing the lead up to ten 79-69. He finished with 16 points with 13 of them coming in the second half.
The rest of the game became an offensive onslaught by ELAC, with Cheatum bringing the crowd to their feet with a monstrous posterizing dunk over a Trade Tech player.
With the win the Huskies moved to 13-5, (2-1 in conference) as they will host Cerritos College tomorrow at 5 p.m.