{"id":1971,"date":"2010-02-26T06:11:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T06:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/tonight-poly-vs-etiwanda-cif-boys-bball-semis\/"},"modified":"2010-02-26T06:11:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T06:11:00","slug":"tonight-poly-vs-etiwanda-cif-boys-bball-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/tonight-poly-vs-etiwanda-cif-boys-bball-semis","title":{"rendered":"TONIGHT: Poly Vs. Etiwanda, CIF Boys&#8217; BBall Semis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--StartFragment-->  <em><br \/><\/em><span><em>Photo by Matt Guardabascio<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Long Beach Poly is going a long way towards restoring the luster to the green and gold this year, with a<span style=\"mso-spacerun:yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>league title, and a CIF semifinal match tonight against the Etiwanda Eagles at 7pm at LBCC.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>But to reach the goal they set for themselves this offseason (league title, CIF title, state title), they&#8217;ll need to beat a very good, upset-minded Etiwanda team that already knocked off Corona Centennial.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Byron Wesley (#25), a 6&#8217;5&#8243; junior forward is the biggest threat\u2014averaging over 18 points a game this year, Wesley is the leader, and our own Ryan ZumMallen (who saw Etiwanda in a tournament earlier this year) says he&#8217;s the real deal.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>He can knock down the three, throw down, pass, pretty much everything you could ask a high school junior to do.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>Fortunately for Poly, their strength game in and game out has been defense.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span><o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It showed in their last game against Los Osos\u2014Kendall Williams seemed primed to rip into them with a huge first half.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>The hassling defense of Robert Nixon held him to just six points in the second.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Because of his size and position, the defensive duties will likely be left primarily to Roshcon Prince and Shelton Boykin\u2014should they clamp down, and should the rest of the Poly D handle Jordan Daniels (a 5&#8217;9&#8243; guard who&#8217;s the second leading scorer)\u2026well, it could be a good night for Poly, provided they run the court and get into a better offensive rhythm than they had against Los Osos, where it took three quarters for the Rabbits to warm up.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p>  <!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A scouting report on what to expect of the Etiwanda Eagles tonight at 7pm at LBCC, in a CIF boys&#8217; basketball semifinal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}