Ridge View defeats Riverside 58-52 to win AAAA boys basketball state championship

Florence —Ridge View High School’s boys basketball team could have had a little drama while battling

Riverside Saturday at Florence Center, but the Blazers were just that good at blunting Riverside’s attacks whenever they appeared.

Sophomore guard Korie Corbett scored 18 points and senior forward Jayden Pretty added 15

points as Ridge View took out Riverside 58-52 to win their fifth AAAA state championship.

“It’s surreal, man,” Pretty said. “I had a dream about this a month ago, now I’m here, and we

won it. I owe it all to my team and my coaches, everybody who helped me get here, my

teammates.”

Once they built a lead, Pretty and the Blazers, who finished with a 27-2 record, went all out to protect it. While Julen Iturbe led 25-5 Riverside with 12 points, Drew Cannon put up 11 and Sebe Boyogueno added

10, every time a Warrior wanted to start a rally, a Blazer came up to extinguish it.

“We’ve got a team full of killers. That’s how they are,” said second-year RVHS head coach Josh Staley,

who won a state title as head coach of A.C. Flora before coming to coach the Blazers. “They’re like

that in practice every day. … We’ve played high-level games all year long. We never fold, we

never crack. The bench was live and cheering for us through the ups and the downs, so I wasn’t

surprised.”

The team’s preparation for Riverside’s defense helped tremendously to keep down the surprises.

“We only had two days to prep for a really well-coached team,” Staley said. “They run an

unbelievable pack line defense (a variation of man-to-man), so we had to stop settling for the

first shot and work our way through that defense and try to get the best shot, and we were able to

make some shots down the stretch.”

Patience helped the Blazers greatly, especially late in the game.

Ridge View opened the game immediately taking advantage of some sloppy ball handling from

Riverside, jumping to a 20-6 lead in the first seven minutes of the game. 

“We hadn’t been starting well throughout the playoffs, so when we started off well tonight, I

knew that was good for us because I knew Riverside was going to make a run,” Staley said. ”They shoot the ball extremely well, they have a 6-(foot)-7)-inch NCAA) Division I player (Iterbe, who signed with

American University), so the hot start helped us out a lot.”

Riverside did what Staley expected, too.

The Warriors cleaned up their act with a 10-0 scoring run that straddled the first and second

quarters.

Iturbe hit a 3-point shot with 40 seconds left in the first quarter to get things started for the Warriors, and

Drew Cannon followed up with a foul shot before the first quarter buzzer. Sebi Boyogueno

opened the second-quarter scoring with a free throw, Mikkel Skinner hit a putback, Reeves

Garner drained a 3, and Iturbe hit another foul shot to make it 20-16 at the 6:14 mark of the

second quarter. 

Riverside looked to make a move, but the Blazers stopped the run and outscored the Warriors 12-

10 over the rest of the second quarter.

Ridge View led 32-26 lead at the half. Pretty had 12 first-half points and Corbett had nine. 

The second half was Ridge View scoring just enough to stave off a Riverside rally, with the

Blazers both working the clock and taking their time for just the right shots.

Robert Wiley’s basket with 3:42 left in the game gave Ridge View a 52-45 lead. Cannon’s

3-pointer 15 seconds later cut that lead to 52-48, a lead that Ridge View held for more than two

minutes.

Riverside made two baskets, but the Blazers went to the foul line. Although they were 6 of 10

from the foul line in the final 90 seconds, it was enough to preserve the win.

“Patience. Coach told us to slow down, take our time,” Pretty said. “We don’t have to rush shots.

Watching film, we saw how other teams rushed their shots, but if you take your time, you’ll do

good.”

On having patience, Staley said it was vital to get to the state championship game after a 15-13

effort in his first year.

“The buy-in was big. The kids that were here last year bought in the whole time,” he said. “It just

takes time to develop. Most people call it growing pains, and that’s exactly what it is. We had to

grow, we had to learn each other, we had to learn to love each other, accept each other for who

we were, and I knew we could get to this point.”