Youthful Sea Kings learning

Chris Yemma

Season openers can be different things for different teams. For the

Corona del Mar High boys basketball team, it was a learning

experience.

The Sea Kings lost to host Edison, 54-34, Wednesday in a nonleague

game and both teams’ season opener.

For Edison, it was a big win and a big loss. With 2:11 remaining,

team captain Thomas Marcin went down with an ankle injury. Marcin

said he won’t know how serious it is until Monday.

The Sea Kings used Wednesday night’s game as a tool to gauge what

sort of options the team will have in the future. CdM Coach Ryan

Curry said the score wasn’t a huge surprise.

“I can’t say I’m really shocked,” Curry said. “I thought we’re

young, we might struggle a little bit and Edison’s always really

good. [Edison Coach Rich Boyce] does a great job; they run their

stuff, they’re physical.”

Wednesday’s opener was a mixture of Sea King malfunctions and

Edison dominance. Corona del Mar couldn’t recover from a second

quarter in which it put up five points to the Chargers’ 14. CdM was

already down by five entering the second quarter and made just two

buckets before going to into halftime down, 30-16.

“I would have liked us to do a few things better that we could

have done,” Curry said. “We did a better job in the second half

rebounding and I thought we did a better job defensively. You can’t

be happy with losses, but we want to just grow.”

The Sea Kings put up better numbers in the second half, matching

Edison’s 11 third-quarter points, but the Chargers’ point total in

the first half was too detrimental to overcome.

Ted Slaughter, a 6-foot-7 senior, led CdM with 11 points, six

rebounds and two blocks. With eight points, junior Ryan Lance was the

next highest point-scorer for the Sea Kings.

“It was a very disappointing game for us,” Slaughter said. “We

should have attacked the post a lot more because I feel we have a

strong post presence. I thought we were on the perimeter a little too

much.”

Corona del Mar has three 6-foot-7 players on its roster --

Slaughter, senior Bobby Jacobs and freshman Stefan Kaluz. Slaughter

had his points, Kaluz had one and Jacobs was shut down for no points.

With the size CdM brings to every game, rebounding shouldn’t be a

big issue for the team. But in the team’s opener, it was.

“The biggest thing is we need to do a better job on the boards,”

Curry said. “We had excuses the last couple of years because we were

so undersized, but we’re a lot bigger now and we should do a better

job.”

Edison’s lineup and depth also proved to be too much for CdM.

Fourteen different Edison players attempted shots and nine of them

scored. The team combined to shoot 43 percent from the field.

Chargers’ senior Joe Ziemann led all point-scorers with 14 and hit

6 of 7 from the field, including 2 of 3 three pointers.

Before Marcin went out in the fourth, he had nine points and eight

rebounds, with four offensive boards. But the team’s big win was

countered with Marcin’s injury.

“We played well,” Edison Coach Boyce said. “We played like it was

a first game and they played like it was a first game. It’s just a

little bit of a downer Thomas got hurt. That’s really going to hurt

us, depending on the severity of it.”

Corona del Mar doesn’t have much time to lick its wounds after the

20-point loss. The Sea Kings face Newport Harbor in the battle of the

bay Friday night in a rivalry that always brings intensity to every

game in every sport.

“We’re trying to settle the younger kids in and I told them we’ll

look different against Harbor,” Curry said. “We have to look

different.”

*--*

Nonleague

Edison 54, Corona del Mar 34

Score by Quarters

CdM 11 5 11 7 -- 34

Edison 16 14 11 13 -- 54

CdM -- T. Lance 4, Slaughter 11, Smith 4, R.

Lance 9, Hirata 5, Kaluz 1, Doran 0, Hinton

0. 3-pt. goals -- Hirata 1. Fouled out -- None. Technicals -- None. Edison -- Lipold

10, J. Golden 0, Darin 3, Ziemann 14, Reed 9,

Marcin 9, Wan 0, Suzuki 0, Farmer 3, Doran 0,

T. Golden 0, Reed 2, Moriyama 2, Donegan 2.

3-pt. goals -- Ziemann 2, Reed 1, Farmer 1.

Fouled out -- None. Technicals -- None.

*--*