Oxnard Takes Its Best Shot and Wins

VENTURA —  Defensive rebounding was foremost on the minds of Oxnard High entering Wednesday night’s nonleague boys’ basketball game at Buena High.

But it was the Yellowjackets’ torrid shooting that got them off to a sizzling start in a 68-47 victory.

Oxnard, top-ranked team in the region by The Times, made its first six shots and eight of its first 10 while winning its 10th consecutive game and posting its third consecutive 20-victory season.

“We’ve been working on defensive rebounding all week,” Coach Henry Lobo of Oxnard said. “That was what we had emphasized in practice, but we shot very well [Wednesday night]. We played with the kind of intensity that had been lacking a little bit in the last three or four games.”

Oxnard (20-3) pulled away from Buena in the final 2 1/2 minutes of a 70-58 victory over the Bulldogs on Jan. 10, but the Yellowjackets controlled the rematch from the outset.

Oxnard scored the first 10 points of the game and led, 23-8, at the end of the first quarter.

Buena (14-9) cut its deficit to 25-17 with 4:17 left in the second quarter, but Oxnard closed the half with a 14-2 run.

Erik Webb, who scored 12 points, started the run with a three-point shot and Shamir Simmons capped it with a layup.

Simmons scored six of his 17 points during the run and made eight of 12 shots in the game.

Nicholas Curtis, Oxnard’s 6-foot-8 senior center, had five of his 18 points during that stretch and made seven of 10 shots in the game.

Oxnard, ranked ninth in Southern Section Division I-AAA, upped its lead to 56-25 with 2:07 left in the third quarter while hitting eight of its first 13 shots in the quarter.

Buena, which beat Santa Barbara and Ventura in its two previous games, looked confused at that point.

“I don’t know,” Coach Glen Hannah of Buena said when asked if the Bulldogs were intimidated by Oxnard’s superior quickness.

“We acted like it. We were two [points] down to them at the half last time we played and we trailed by three with less than three minutes to go. But we came out like we were scared to death in the second half [tonight].”

Oxnard, which made 27 of 46 shots before Lobo started substituting liberally with five minutes remaining in the game, is the first team in the region to win 20 games this season. But Lobo said a third consecutive 20-victory season wasn’t what he or his team were focused on.

“We don’t think about that stuff,” he said. “We don’t worry about that stuff. We don’t talk about that stuff. At the end of the year, we’ll probably look back and talk about those types of things, but right now, we’re just trying to play as well as we can and win every game.”

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