Lamart Dudley had 10 points and 11 rebounds, and David Marrero blocked seven shots as Campbell pulled away for a 42-34 win over Kamehameha-Hawaii in the opening round of the New City Nissan/HHSAA Division I Boys Basketball State Championships.
A modest crowd of about 300 watched the late-afternoon game at McKinley Student Council Gymnasium.
Down 30-26 late in the third quarter, the Sabers surged ahead and went on a 10-2 run to seize control.
Marrero, a 6-foot-7 senior, scored a game-high 11 points and gathered six boards. Campbell outrebounded KS-Hawaii 29-21, hauling in eight offensive caroms. Michael "Taco" Merchant added nine points and point guard Jomar "Jett" Gapusan tallied eight points.
Merchant (four steals) and Gapusan each had four assists as the Sabers patiently worked against the Warriors’ mix of man and 1-2-2 zone defenses.
Dudley, a 6-1 forward, was much more focused on battling in the paint than usual. Even when he missed a shot, Marrero was there to collect the ball for a putback.
"I told him, ‘If the lane is there, take the lane’," Gapusan said.
Solomon Escalante led KS-Hawaii (11-15) with 10 points. The Warriors shot 10-for-44 (23 percent) from the field against the tall, long Sabers. They shot 79 percent from the free-throw line (11-for-14), but couldn’t get to the charity stripe at all in the fourth quarter.
With the win over the BIIF’s D-I runner-up, Campbell (17-7), the OIA’s fifth-place finisher, advanced to the quarterfinal round. The Sabers will meet second-seeded Farrington on Thursday, 5 p.m., at McKinley in a rematch of an OIA quarterfinal. Farrington won that game in overtime, 60-55, and went on to win the league title.
Campbell struggled against Farrington’s defensive pressure that night, but looked far more comfortable against KS-Hawaii’s press. The young Warriors tried to tilt the game in their favor by using its quickness against a much taller team, but Campbell jumped to an 8-0 lead before the Warriors adjusted. The Sabers led 20-18 at intermission.
"Give (KS-Hawaii) credit. They wanted it more than us in the first half," Campbell coach Wyatt Tau said. "I told them if we don’t match their intensity, we’ll lose this game."
The Warriors stayed close for more than a half, then took a 27-24 lead on Escalante’s 3-pointer with 2:52 left in the third quarter. After he swished another trey moments later, KS-Hawaii had its biggest lead, 30-26.
From there, it was all Sabers. Merchant hit back-to-back buckets in the low post, and after Merchant hit his only 3-pointer of the game, Campbell had a 34-32 lead with 6:19 remaining.
"Nothing was falling for me in the first half or second half, so I turned to my defense and passing," Merchant said. "Thank God that 3 fell for me."
Merchant added two foul shots after getting a steal. KS-Hawaii went scoreless for 7 minutes before Pukana Vincent hit a 17-footer from straightaway with 2:58 left, cutting the lead to 36-34.
Vincent missed a corner 3, and after Jayce Bantolina fed Marrero for a layup, the Sabers had a 38-34 lead.
Another steal by Merchant almost sealed the win for Campbell, but turnover problems returned. KS-Hawaii simply couldn’t capitalize, going 0-for-6 from 3-point range and 2-for-12 from the field in the final quarter against Campbell’s 1-2-2 zone.
"It’s disappointing," Warriors coach Dominic Pacheco said. "We were trying to go inside-out. We played well enough to win, but the turnover cost us."
Campbell’s man defense was suffocating in the fourth quarter. Tau credited Isaiah Gibson, a reserve forward, for a big boost.
"We didn’t need points from him. He just had to box out, and he got four crucial rebounds for us," Tau said.
Now the Sabers get a shot at the Cinderella team — Farrington — that outworked them in the OIA playoffs.
"That game, we rushed a lot," Gapusan recalled. "We gave that game away."
‘Iolani 37, Leilehua 36
The defending state champion Raiders (16-7) rallied from a nine-point second-half deficit to advance to the quarterfinals. Robby Mann scored 11 points and Erik Yamada added 10. Hugh Hogland had nine points, including two dunks during ‘Iolani’s comeback. Hogland, a 6-7 junior, also had a key block on a drive by Leilehua point guard Joseph Gouty with the Raiders clinging to a 35-34 lead.
Mann connected on two foul shots with 46 seconds left for a 37-34 edge.
The Mules got one 3-pointer off in the final seconds, by Nicholas Duran, but it was partially blocked. After that, Gouty opted to drive for a layup with 5 seconds left that cut the lead to 37-36, but the Mules were out of time outs and the Raiders let the clock run out.
Anterrio Gainwell and Koa Kauhi led Leilehua (17-10), the OIA’s fourth-place team, with eight points apiece.
‘Iolani will meet third-seeded Lahainaluna in Thursday’s 7 p.m. game at McKinley.