By Ted Apodaca: After a close first half, Western High used a third quarter edge to get a 56-49 win over Rancho Alamitos in a consolation game at the Rancho Alamitos Christmas Classic Tournament recently at Rancho Alamitos High.<\/p>\n

The Pioneers led 32-30 at halftime, but managed to stretch their lead to 47-40 at the end of the third quarter. But the Vaqueros made a run in the fourth to close the gap to 51-49, before the Pioneers closed out the final 1:40 on a 5-0 run.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

By Ted Apodaca: After a close first half, Western High used a third quarter edge to get a 56-49 win over Rancho Alamitos in a consolation game at the Rancho Alamitos Christmas Classic Tournament recently at Rancho Alamitos High.<\/p>\n

The Pioneers led 32-30 at halftime, but managed to stretch their lead to 47-40 at the end of the third quarter. But the Vaqueros made a run in the fourth to close the gap to 51-49, before the Pioneers closed out the final 1:40 on a 5-0 run.<\/p>\n

Rancho Alamitos senior guard Matthew Bautista hit a three-pointer to open the fourth quarter that cut the lead to 47-43. Bautista led all scorers with 24 points.<\/p>\n

Western junior Noe Herrera took a pass inside and scored to push the lead back to 49-43. But the Vaqueros went on a 6-2 run from there. Senior guard Nick Castro hit a running lob shot that cut the lead to 49-45. After that, Bautista made a defensive steal and took the ball coast to coast for a layup that cut the lead to 49-47 with 2:59 left.<\/p>\n

Western senior Brandon Magallanes drove the key to draw the defense and dished a pass to Herrera for an uncontested layup that pushed the lead to 51-47. After another steal by Bautista, freshman Kenny Cordova put back an offensive rebound to pull Rancho back within 51-49, but that would be as close as the Vaqueros would get.<\/p>\n

Western coach Dan Davidson liked the way his team handled the late run by the Vaqueros.<\/p>\n

“The key was composure, the kids really had good composure,” Davidson said.<\/p>\n

The Pioneers also had a big game from senior forward Rahul Bagga, who had 17 points and 12 rebounds. Herrera had 18 points to lead the scoring for Western. Magallanes scored 11 points.<\/p>\n

Tommy Tran tallied nine points for Rancho Alamitos and Nick Castro chipped in seven for the Vaqueros.<\/p>\n

The Vaqueros open Garden Grove League play at 7 p.m.Wednesday, Jan. 11 at Bolsa Grande High.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ted Apodaca: After a close first half, Western High used a third quarter edge to get a 56-49 win over Rancho Alamitos in a consolation game at the Rancho Alamitos Christmas Classic Tournament recently at Rancho Alamitos High. The Pioneers led 32-30 at halftime, but managed to stretch their lead to 47-40 at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":1655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3214],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4618,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions\/4618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}