Guards Point Way to Win for Cleveland : Backcourt Combines for 46 in 86-48 Victory Over Fairfax

For those with poor memories, a refresher course on Fairfax High is offered purely for the sake of proper historical perspective. Last season, behind All-American center Chris Mills, Fairfax won the Valley League for the second year in a row. Two seasons ago, 3 players signed with Division I colleges as Fairfax won the City Section 4-A Division title with an easy win over Cleveland.

Fairfax Coach Harvey Kitani, jigger in hand, had mixed a series of winning concoctions that made Fairfax one of the most feared teams in the state.

This season, however, with only one letterman back, Harvey’s wallbangers are no more.

Tuesday night, Cleveland defeated Fairfax for only the second time in 8 meetings, 86-48. When these teams met exactly 51 weeks ago, Mills alone scored 42 points in yet another Fairfax victory. After years of holding the other guy’s head under water, it’s finally Fairfax’s turn to take the plunge.

“They held us down for the last couple years,” Cleveland forward Lucious Harris said. “It was our turn tonight.”

No Fairfax player scored in double figures. The Lions managed only 7 points in the third quarter, after which they trailed, 66-31. Not that it really mattered. Fairfax trailed, 49-24, at the half after Cleveland (1-1) reeled off a 32-point second quarter that included 9 points by guard Adonis Jordan, who scored a game-high 20.

Jordan led a swarm of guards who harassed Fairfax’s ballhandling corps, forcing the Lions (0-2) into nearly as many turnovers (20) as points (24) in the half. Cleveland, which started a 3-guard lineup, applied a defensive tourniquet that squeezed miscue after miscue out of Fairfax--31 in all.

“We went with a lot of the mostly quicker people,” said Harris, who had 19 points and a game-high 11 rebounds. “We wanted to put pressure on them.”

By the second quarter, the pressure became unbearable. Fairfax turned the ball over 12 times in 8 minutes and scored only 13 points, 9 of which came on free throws. It didn’t get much better in the third quarter, when Fairfax went 0 for 8 from the field.

Cleveland Coach Bob Braswell breathed a sigh of relief about midway through the third quarter. He was uncertain how his team would react after last Friday’s 88-74 loss to Westchester, ranked No. 1 in the state.

“If you win a game like that, it can give a team a great boost,” Braswell said. “But if you lose, it can destroy you. For us, I think it became instructional.”

And Cleveland handed out pages of lessons against Fairfax. Cavalier guards Eddie Hill (14), Tim Bowen (12) and Jordan combined for 46 points, nearly matching Fairfax’s team total.

“I can’t remember the last time we started 0-2,” Braswell said. “We didn’t just want to go out and win, we wanted to go out and improve.”

And prove a point.