LJ b BB 57, Olympian 41

By Ed Piper

If not for Olympian's Cameron Canlapan acting as sharpshooter, La Jolla would have run away and hid--if it didn't already.

The Vikings, playing their final tilt of the summer, stayed with their acknowledged strength of being rapid in transition to nail down a 57-41 win Wed., July 12, in the Montgomery High league.

Evan Brown, especially, showed renewed freedom and confidence as he played big and leaped high for rebounds and putbacks. Maybe it had to do with fellow big Charlie Gal being absent and Brown serving as the lone frontcourtman for Coach Paul Baranowski's bunch.

And Nick Hulmquist, another rising junior newcomer to the La Jolla varsity, showed brief glimpses of what he may have in store in the future with back-to-back threes around the three-minute mark in the third quarter, when the Vikings led the overmatched Eagles by as many as 18 to verge on blowout status.

Back to Canlapan, number double zero for Olympian Coach Marty Ellis' squad. The 5'6" guard, a rising senior who averaged 1.8 points per game for the South Bay League champs last year (30-4 for the season), had the Vikings' Jacob Duffy in extremis in the third quarter.

First, the slight player canned a three from far out from the left elbow. Duffy, guarding Canlapan closely, knocked him down while the long bomb went in. That made for a four-point play opportunity.

The second time this happened, Cameron going down, the three going in, a foul on Duffy, the Viking defender looked at his coach with a look like, "What am I supposed to do?"

Had Canlapan not been firing multiple long-range tracers, Olympian would have been much farther out of a contest their guard was gamely trying to keep them in.

The Eagle ball-handler committed a costly turnover with 58 seconds left in the period. With Brown's unlikely three from the top of the key dropping through the hoop as the third quarter buzzer sounded, La Jolla led 45-29.

Olympian made a final effort in the fourth period to whittle the lead down to 13 at 53-40 with 3:20 left.

Hulmquist, though he missed, dazzled with a Jordan-like move to the basket on his team's final possession. Nick, who struggled a little with his ball skills earlier, fronted the basket, faked, then leaped extending his right arm with the ball out to the side with his legs gathered.

The ball nudged off the right side of the rim, but it was a fun way to end the contest, and the summer.