PASADENA — The Pasadena High School boys basketball team wanted no piece of helping rival Muir back into the Pacific League race.
The host Bulldogs won the battle of Pasadena in resounding fashion on Friday night with a 78-58 win in front of a sellout crowd.
“You can go into our locker room now and look on the board, and it says every game is for the championship,” Pasadena standout guard Ajon Efferson said. “Every game is for all the stakes, and we can’t let up.”
Efferson scored a game-high 28 points as Pasadena improved to 11-8 overall and 6-1 in league. Muir fell to 6-11 overall and 3-4 in league.
The Mustangs entered Friday’s game coming off an upset win over Burbank Burroughs, which entered Friday’s action tied with Pasadena for first place in the league standings. Another upset and the Mustangs would have been back in action.
But it was apparent early that Pasadena was having none of it.
Despite Efferson picking up two early fouls, the Bulldogs led 13-10 after the first quarter and 37-20 at halftime after Rayjon Moore joined Efferson in lighting up the Muir defense.
“We lay our hat on defense,” Pasadena coach Tony Brooks said of his team limiting a Muir offense that scored 71 points against Burroughs to just 20 at half. “That’s been the tradition of this program for 30, 40, 50 years. We work every day on it. We talk about it. We sleep on it.”
The Mustangs were all too willing to play into Pasadena’s tactics. Patience was no part of the Muir attack, which forced up several shots early in the shot clock while trying to force a frenetic pace.
Pasadena began the second half with Efferson setting up teammate Tyrek Adams for a dunk on a alley-oop pass, followed by an Adams free throw later in the third quarter, and Pasadena led 49-29.
Muir chipped away at Pasadena’s lead and looked like it might be about to make things interesting down the stretch when Jhamir Jenkins hit a 3-pointer from the corner to make it 54-45 with seven minutes left.
Efferson responded by hitting 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions. He later added anotherand Pasadena was comfortably ahead again. Efferson scored 13 points in the fourth quarter.
“Ajon works very hard at this, and he does that for those times in a game,” said Brooks, who got his first win in the rivalry series as head coach after taking over former Bulldogs coach Tim Tucker, who was in the crowd on Friday.
“I still think we need to execute better,” Brooks said. “They cut into the lead because of our lack of defense and lack of execution. But those are things we’ll work on and get better.”
Muir guard Dejon Williams, who scored 44 points in Tuesday’s win over Burroughs, finished with 11 points. Chris Ballew led the Mustangs with 20 points.
Moore scored 20 points for Pasadena.
The Bulldogs and Mustangs will meet again at Muir in the season finale on Feb. 13.
